


Two Words in Green Ink

by fluorescencx



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Eventual Smut, Harry Needs a Hug, In Character, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Voldemort, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, So much angst, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, and when i say in character i mean very in character, canon compliant until year five, starts in year five, still a sadist though, the further you read the less painful it gets, this isn’t a fluffy soulmate au, this starts out really dark, voldemort goes kinda soft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-05 20:22:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 111,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21423880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescencx/pseuds/fluorescencx
Summary: Eleven year old Harry didn't know how he knew--he didn't even know what it was he knew--but as he stood in Olivander's shop with Hagrid, he vowed that he would never tell a soul about the two words written on his wrist.Avada Kedavra.---a story of souls told in three parts.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 670
Kudos: 3256
Collections: HP Soul Bonds, Harry is LVs Prisonee, Harrymort/Tomarry Recs for the Soul, Lady Bibliophile's Collection of Incredible Fanfiction, Stories That Deserve More





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hi and welcome!
> 
> a few things before we start:  
i posted all the way up to part three before adding any trigger warnings and i’m really sorry for that! if you have any further questions about triggers/content please message me on tumblr and i’ll be happy to help
> 
> all of the following apply ONLY to the first ten chapters of the fic:  
implied/referenced suicidal thoughts (no actions and no descriptive language) | violence/torture between main pairing | loss of sanity (i include this because of the reader who told me the blur between reality/hallucinations triggered their dissociation)
> 
> the following apply to the rest of the fic:  
symptoms of PTSD (namely panic attacks and flashbacks)
> 
> please heed the tags and trigger warnings! this fic starts out very very dark and does eventually get better, but please proceed with caution and always put your own health and safety first
> 
> all that being said, thanks for reading and i hope you enjoy <3 my inbox is always open

Harry Potter was battered, beaten and hungry when Hagrid came through the broken doorway of the shambled house in the sea. Just minutes before he’d been blowing out candles drawn in a blanket of dust on the stone floor, wishing himself a happy birthday and not really meaning it, for it was anything but happy. Harry had always been anything but happy. Harry thought that the half-crushed cake Hagrid drew from his coat might have been the finest meal he’d had his entire life, which was funny because there was nothing extraordinary about it at all. Though there was nothing extraordinary about Harry Potter, either.

Harry found out much sooner than anyone had expected that he was much more extraordinary than he, or anyone, had ever imagined.

The knowledge hadn’t come when he pulled the sorcerer's stone from a reflection, or when his touch burned the face of Professor Quirrel. It hadn’t come when he killed a basilisk or defeated Tom Riddle, nor when he fought off a hoard of dementors at only thirteen. Harry hadn’t even realized he was extraordinary the night of Little Hangleton, when his wand somehow countered the Dark Lord’s against all odds. It wasn’t any of that, for it had come much sooner than that. Though, it did, in the end, all lead back to his wand.

The day Harry Potter realized he was extraordinary was the day Hagrid took him to Diagon Alley, and the moment he was handed his wand. It was a lovely thing, eleven inches and carved of holly, though at the time Harry could think of nothing but the fact that he was holding a wand in his hand. A wand! It had chosen him, and he had done magic without even realizing it!

Ollivander told him about the phoenix feather at its core, of course, and Harry did find it quite strange, but there wasn’t much he could do about it then, nor did he understand who Voldemort truly was, how much he had truly destroyed. So while Ollivander seemed somewhat shaken, or at the very least morbidly fascinated, Harry had other concerns.

And oh, if only Ollivander had known. How much more concerned he would have been.

“Before you’re chosen, Harry, there is one more thing I must tell you,” Ollivander had said, a gaze lingering on his wrist. Harry was wearing his muggle clothes, of course, a shirt of Dudley’s that was meant to be short sleeve but hung to Harry’s elbows nonetheless. Still, his pale wrist was clearly visible. Something about the gaze unnerved him enough to flip his wrist to face away, and Ollivander’s eyes rose easily to Harry’s as if he’d only glanced for a second. “When your spell is cast with the correct wand, something may appear on your wrist, just there,” he’d tapped on his wrist, covered beneath the sleeve of his robes. “It is the mark of your soulmate.”

“Soulmate?” Harry asked. He was surprised only briefly before he shook himself. After all he’d seen that day, there was really nothing that should surprise him.

“Soulmate,” Ollivander nodded solemnly. “It will appear to you as your wand’s magic and yours agree to each other, only if you’re younger than the individual bearing your mark. If your soulmate has not yet been acquainted with their own magic, you won’t receive yours until they’re old enough to walk into a shop and choose a wand for themselves. Or, rather, let it choose them.” He smiled then, the briefest tilt of his lips, and he seemed much less frightening to Harry.

“Well, what is it then?” Harry inquired. “What is the mark and what does it mean?”

“The mark is unique for everyone, no two are the same. It could be a sentence or a pairing of words, a symbol or marking that you don’t know the meaning of. You might not understand it at first, but you will, eventually, and when you find your soulmate, you’ll know.”

“Because they'll love me?” Harry’s voice had tilted up slightly with hope as he spoke the words. Unfortunately, he didn’t think his aunt and uncle loved each other very much at all. He was looking forward to the idea.

Ollivander huffed a bit of a laugh. “Well, we certainly hope so. But, in a more straight-forward sign, they need only to lay a finger on your mark for you to feel it burn, and you will know.”

The hungry look had all but diminished from Ollivander’s eyes by the time he handed Harry the wand with the phoenix core, and although they still glinted a bit with curiosity the flip of Harry’s wrist proved unnecessary. Ollivander's eyes hadn’t so much as flickered downward.

“One last thing,” Ollivander had said before Harry exited the shop back into the hustle and bustle of Diagon Alley. “This mark is a secret only for you and your soulmate. Protect it now and always.”

Harry had nodded solemnly, a hand clamped over his skinny wrist, but didn’t look down at his still pink skin until he’d been easily carried into the crowd outside of his shop.

In green ink, shining sharply, almost menacingly, were two words.

_ Avada Kedavra._

———

There are two notable markings on Voldemort’s skin. One is a dark branding on his left forearm, that of a serpent, and represents all that he has ever cared for. The Dark Mark is a power that cannot be rivaled, an army that cannot be broken, and tyranny. Voldemort’s reign concentrated down to dark black ink on pallid skin. Oh, how he treasures it.

The second mark sits on his opposite wrist in green ink and somehow seems much more stark, although the color isn’t nearly as contrasted as the black against his skin and the lines are fine. Really, the thin scrawl should go unnoticed, and Voldemort tries his best to let it be so. Yet, still, they glare at him.

A power you know not.

The words stopped puzzling Voldemort many years ago. During the years before he’d become a lord, when he was still roaming the halls of Hogwarts, pulling together followers and creating his first Horcrux, the words may have troubled him. He was still seeking power then, hungering for it and not yet possessing it in the way he knew he someday would. The words then would have been a threat. He hadn’t claimed power yet. He hadn’t made it his own, hadn’t yet grabbed wizarding Britain by its neck and squeezed just to see the veins pop. He hadn’t tasted power, not yet. He knew manipulation and deceit, but that was child’s play.

Back then, had he been stained by the words, he might have fretted. He might have fretted that the words hinted at something that might bring his downfall. A power he knew not . At the time there would be no greater threat.

But Voldemort doesn’t need to worry anymore. What is there to worry about? In a few years the Potter boy will be dead and wizarding Britain will be completely under his reign. There is no power that Voldemort knows not; not anymore. He knows it all, and what are the words, anyway? A mark of a soulmate. When they were put on his skin he was a child, still weak, his soul still completely intact and the possibility of love still available to him, somewhere, although even then he’s sure he would have shuddered at the very idea. Of course they had appeared to him, as they did everyone, but Voldemort knows very well that any of the meaning they once held has gone. He isn’t capable of love, isn’t capable of empathy, is sickened by the very thought of such weakness.

Much like the Dark Mark, the words can’t be removed, although Merlin knows Voldemort has tested every possibility. If he could rid himself of the wretched skin the words are inked onto he would carve it out himself, but the ink would only resurface. There is no ridding himself of them, despite the sight of them disgusting him to no end. Voldemort knows the words hold no meaning now, that they are a prophecy that cannot be fulfilled, and yet they stay marring his skin. He loathes them. The Dark Lord knows no weakness and the skin of his right wrist suggests otherwise. If he hadn’t witnessed Peter’s mark reappearing on the hand conjured by Voldemort he might even consider hacking the entire thing off and replacing it himself, but the soulmarks truly are stubborn little things.

Voldemort doesn’t fear the words themselves, not anymore. But he does fear soulmates.

When a soulmate dies, so does the other. It’s only a matter of time before the person left behind finds themselves with a wand in their mouth or standing in the path of a train. There is no exception to this rule. It has nothing to do with strength of mind or willpower; it’s simply the way it is.

If he were asked the Dark Lord would say quite adamantly that such powers have no effect on him. If he cannot love, surely the curse can’t touch him. Surely. And yet, there is a chance, and Voldemort does not tolerate chances.

So perhaps there is a power he knows not, although Merlin knows he would never utter the thought, not even to himself. The threat isn’t his soulmate or a power he knows not —the threat is the unknown variable, the thought that if misfortune were to befall the person who wears his mark, he could very well fall too.

So he will find this person. This wildcard. This being with a power over him, because nothing will ever have power of him.

No, Voldemort won’t be having that. Certainly not.

———

There are two notable markings on Harry’s skin. The first mainly serves to attract a lot of stares and secure the first page of the Daily Prophet much more often than Harry would like. The second sits quietly beneath the sleeve of his cloak and goes by perfectly unbothered, and yet seems to bother Harry far more than the brand on his brow has ever served to. Both have got everything to do with Lord Voldemort.

Both are a death sentence, in some manner of speaking.

Harry has heard a lot about the night his parents died—more than he might have liked, probably—but he only remembers this: a green, blinding flash of light. He witnessed the light himself in Little Hangleton just a year ago. Voldemort’s stark face, Cedric’s void eyes, his body on the ground...

But most of all the green, a sudden flash so blinding that Harry didn’t even see him fall.

He sees the color every time he allows his eyes to linger on his right arm, his hands to trace the script with the tip of their fingers. He wishes it was blinding, just so he wouldn’t be able to look at it. But it is not, and so he looks. And looks. However much he hates them he finds it so hard to pull his eyes away, and he doesn’t bother making excuses as to why. There are too many explanations, really, it would be a bother trying to sort through them all.

Excuses aside, here is the fact of it: Harry is going to die.

He’s always known, really. He’s known since the first time someone explained to him the killing curse, the first time he’d heard the words. The terror that twisted in his stomach right then was a terror unique to any other he’s experienced. The killing curse is tattooed on my right wrist, was his first thought. His second was, Voldemort is my soulmate .

Then the third: I am going to die.

Because he was. He is. No witch or wizard can live without their soulmate, and Voldemort can’t live. Eventually, he’ll have to die, and Harry is the one expected to kill him, which ultimately means killing himself. Figuratively, and eventually literally.

Harry remembers when Kevin Entwhistle’s father died during second year. It was a freak muggle accident, construction gone wrong while he was passing through muggle London. When a muggle dies they plan the funeral within the week, but when a wizard who’s bonded with their soulmate dies, they wait. Kevin left school that week to spend time with his mother. Everyone knew time was limited. It always is. Eventually she died, too, stepped right off the top of a building, and only then did they start planning the funeral. For both of them.

When Harry kills Voldemort he’ll die. He knows this, has always known this. It’s the biggest reason no one can know about the words on his wrist. If they knew, they wouldn’t let Harry do it. They would look for other options, another way to stop him, anything , but none of it would work. Nothing will ever stop Voldemort but death.

The Dark Lord is incapable of love. If Harry believed his death would drive Voldemort to his own he would have made that choice years ago, but he doesn’t think that’s the case at all. Voldemort won’t die when Harry dies, because ‘soulmate’ has no meaning to him. ‘Soulmate’ is a mark on his right wrist that he can’t rid himself of and nothing more. So this is how it will go: Harry will eventually defeat him, and when he does he will be the one driven to death, because Harry can love. Harry can love deeply, and no amount of sheer hatred for his soulmate can turn that off. Soulmates, at the very core, are instinct. Fate and powerful magic and instinct. Harry couldn’t resist it if he tried.

Harry lies in bed, the creaks and groans of 12 Grimmauld Place the only thing breaking the silence and the dim light of the streetlights from the window the only thing breaking the dark. His hand is held up above him, palm turning up and down, green ink glinting and shimmering as if alive. Harry looks. And he looks. Because it is all he’s ever known how to do with the words.

Maybe, he muses, he was always meant to do this. Maybe he’s always been raised for slaughter. Maybe this is the plan by the fates-that-be, death by a love that Harry doesn’t even feel. Death by hatred. Death by soulmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	2. Prophecies

_ Their souls are both the poison and the antidote. The phoenix and the flame. That which comes together and comes apart—although he and Harry are always coming apart. _

**Part One:**

**The Poison and the Antidote**

Harry doesn’t know how he finds himself in these situations. Fate maybe. Reckless Gryffindor courage. Poor luck. He just knows this is where he always ends up—face to face with the Dark Lord, wands drawn.

First in the room below the third-floor corridor. Second in the Chamber of Secrets. Third in the graveyard of Little Hangleton. And now fourth standing in the Department of Mysteries, surrounded by prophecies and standing just in front of the one with Harry Potter’s name on the tag. Standing before him is the very person sharing the prophecy, and the very person who cannot be allowed to reach it.

Dumbledore was the one to tell Harry himself. The prophecy belongs to him and Voldemort alone, and the prophecy in the Dark Lord’s hands is a dangerous thing. The information is delicate.

Harry, predictably, is morbidly curious.

But here lies the larger problem.

“I don’t wish to kill you, Harry. At least not until I hear what’s spoken in this prophecy. I won’t risk it.”

Voldemort looks haunting cast in the light that the prophecies shed on his face. More pallid than Harry has ever seen him. His skin looks almost translucent. The red irises stand out like beacons, the only shade aside from monochrome Harry can see anywhere.

“Probably not the wisest decision to tell the person protecting what you want that what you want is the only thing keeping them alive.”

“I’m only being honest with you.”

“Oh, yes. That certainly puts my mind at ease.” Harry wonders when he picked up Ron’s habit of depending on sarcasm in life-threatening situations.

“I don’t want to toy with my food, but I will if I must. Are you going to make me?”

“As opposed to what?”

Voldemort’s voice is sickening and smooth. “Grab the prophecy for me. Just behind you.” As if Harry needs to be told where it is. 

“Then what? You hear it and _ then _you decide to kill me?”

Harry is stalling for time, he knows that. What he isn’t sure of is whether it’s the right thing to be doing. He’s either giving the Order a chance to reach him or the Death Eaters a chance to reach Voldemort. Or both. 

“What is it you think you’ll do, Harry? Spell me deaf and run with it?” Voldemort blatantly ignores Harry’s question. Maybe the answer is obvious.

“I’ll break it.”

“Oh, but you won’t. You want to hear it too, don’t you?”

It’s the only confirmation Harry needs that Voldemort doesn’t know what he does. A broken prophecy would work just fine.

Harry speaks through gritted teeth. “I don’t care.”

“Of course you don’t,” he agrees easily. “When have you ever been so brash?”

Harry’s mind cycles through the last five years as though flipping through a file. If he didn’t know better he’d think Voldemort amused. 

“Now,” Voldemort sighs, twirling his wand between skeletal fingers, “I’m tired of this game. Here’s your last opportunity—step aside or grab it for yourself.” Harry raises his wand. Voldemort nods. “I thought as much.”

Voldemort doesn’t get a chance to raise his wand. Suddenly the air around them is filled with smoke that dissipates as quickly as it appears, each cloud revealing a robed figure. Each crack symbolizing a Death Eater’s appearance makes Harry’s ears throb. The apparition wards have come down, finally.

When it seems every Death Eater has come there’s a brief respite. Harry counts twelve, Bellatrix and Lucius the two he’s able to name before the resounding _ cracks _return with a vigor, and suddenly the Order is materializing just a few meters away. He watches out of one eye as they appear, the other trained steadily on Voldemort, whose gaze hasn’t left Harry. 

Moody. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Remus. Tonks.

_ Sirius_.

One after another they come, wands firing and pairing off against the Death Eaters the moment they hit the ground. Voldemort’s orders must have been clear, for not one of the Death Eaters spare Harry so much as a glance. The Order is too locked in combat and the struggle against the the Death Eaters gradual advance to give him any more attention than them. Voldemort’s orders are clear—push them back and keep them away from Harry. 

It’s as if Harry and Voldemort still stand alone.

The occasional curse misses and comes flying in the direction of the two of them, but Voldemort casts a wandless _Protego _each time as if he can see them coming without even looking. He looks only at Harry.

“The prophecy, Harry.”

Somewhere behind Voldemort, through the throng of black robes and curses, he catches glimpses of the order. There’s Tonks’ bubblegum hair. Moody’s eye seems to nearly shine. And there is Sirius, who locks eyes with Harry only briefly before they pan to where the prophecy must sit behind him.

Harry knows what’s going to happen before it does as easily as if it were him. He wants to shake his head, shout, anything, but it happens too quickly for him to have a chance.

How is Sirius to know when even the Dark Lord does not? Unless Dumbledore were to tell him, there’s no reason he would understand the functions of prophecies. Information on them is so horribly limited that he can’t possibly know—when prophecies break, they speak.

One of the Death Eaters throws a curse at Moody which he quickly counters, sending it rebounding towards the Dark Lord’s back. Once again he casts a shield mindlessly, and Harry sees Sirius’ eyes lock on the prophecy behind him. His Reducto flies past Voldemort’s head and hits the shelf behind him with no mercy.

Harry’s prophecy is remarkably spared direct impact and only teeters as above it prophecies begin to fall.

So many things could have gone differently in that moment. If Harry had only let the sphere fall with the rest of them the sound of Sybil Trelawney’s voice might have been swallowed up in the barrage of voices, but he wasn’t named the youngest Seeker in a century for nothing. His hands reach for the prophecy on instinct alone. If he had caught it as easily as he could catch a snitch the damage could have been reversed, but a snitch is much smaller and a Quidditch match rarely puts Harry’s life on the line, and so it feels quite different. 

Harry doesn’t catch it. He simply knocks it out of the path of the hundreds of falling orbs, sending it flying towards Voldemort but never reaching him. Instead, just a meter from the Dark Lord’s feet, it _ shatters._

————

The orb has scarcely touched the ground when a transparent form seeps from it, quickly solidifying into the shape of a woman before Voldemort. She’s clearly thin, knobbly at the knees but draped in enough shawls and unnecessary faux-jewelry to cover what must be an ill-looking frame. Her eyes are wide and glazed, made owlish by the wide glasses balanced on her nose. With a shuddering breath her mouth opens wide to speak, a hoarse and rasping voice escaping. It resounds even through the sound of curses and shouting from just behind him and the muffled crowd of voices just behind Harry. He absently wonder if it’s charmed louder for its master; it sounds far too clear amidst the chaos to be natural.

Then Sybil Trelawney speaks.

“_ The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies....” _

As the voice of the woman dies out as does her apparition, dissolving to mist and sinking to the dark marble before finally dissipating, leaving Voldemort and Harry only to the dim light of the untouched prophecies around them and the sound of a few broken orbs behind Harry drawn out a bit longer than the rest.

There were many important things spoken in the prophecy, all of which Voldemort will be sure to dwell upon later, but for now only a few words penetrate. They fling themselves wildly against the walls of his skull as he processes, as if they want to be there just as little as he wishes them to be.

The heavy onyx of his mind eventually brings them to a heavy stop, and there they sit, a bitter taste that the Dark Lord won’t ever be able to rid himself of.

_ ...but he will have a power the Dark Lord knows not… _

There is a beat, then two, then three. In which a rotting, simmering rage threatens to bubble up over the surface of his self-control. In which he is almost tempted to succumb to it, to let the writhing fury have its way.

Instead, the Dark Lord throws his head back and _ laughs, _ the sound enough to chill anyone’s spine. He laughs until the prophecies around him buzz with it, vibrating against each other and echoing within the vast room, somehow reverberating as loudly as the voice itself had, outshining the sound of a war just behind him and complementing the Dark Lord’s ominous laughter with a low, eerie, _ hum. _

———

There’s nothing Harry could have done.

Not after Voldemort heard the prophecy, which is as good as a death sentence for Harry. No amount of luck is getting him out of this. Not this time. He’s been too lucky, really. He should have been preparing himself for the luck to run out.

He thought he had. He’s always known he’s going to die. He’s always known that Voldemort will kill him, whether at the hand of his wand or the born curse of Harry’s right wrist, he was going to die. Is. He is going to die. 

He’s been telling himself this since he was old enough to understand. A mantra. A promise, because how else is he to live with this? How else but to make it law?

He always thought he was prepared.

He is not prepared. Not here in this dank room, luck run dry, no wand and no possible escape. 

Chained. Harry feels dangerously sick.

He can’t even find solace in the downfall of the Dark Lord. He’s heard the prophecy. He _ will _ kill Harry, probably rashly, definitely before he’s looked at the tattoo on his wrist, as if he would care enough to. Voldemort doesn’t want anything from Harry but his downfall. Vengeance, maybe. Spite. Whatever the intentions, the result is the same. Harry will die so that Voldemort can live. Voldemort will live because he is unable to love.

This isn’t what was meant to happen. 

Harry has always known he is going to die—and yet he isn’t prepared in the slightest.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	3. Nightmares

The room Harry woke up in hours ago is dark and completely empty, save for the heavy wooden table that Harry’s wrists are tied to. The floor is carpeted in what could have once been expensive but is now worn and faded from what must be years of disuse.

Harry is dressed in the same robes he wore to the Department of Mysteries, though they’re tattered and torn, presumably from the last stand-off with Voldemort. Admittedly, it wasn’t a long-lasting affair. Once Voldemort heard the prophecy he proceeded with reckless abandon, no mind for the prophecies, and within minutes Harry was tied, moments later knocked out. When he awoke he was here in the dark. There’s a lamp above him that’s been flickering halfheartedly, just bright enough for Harry to see the details in the room, which are minimal, and nothing more than that.

That was hours ago. The panic abated quite a few hours before, leaving him eerily calm. He’s somehow not too worried about Voldemort. Mostly, he’s thirsty. _ Merlin_, he’s thirsty.

His arms are tied in front of him so he is at least allowed the luxury of lying on his back, however limited his movement is. The ceiling seems to be in good condition, so at least he can rest assured that he won’t be dropped on if it rains.

He won’t say he’ll be glad to see Voldemort, but he’d be thankful for a glass of water. Possibly a sandwich as well, but he’ll take what he can get.

Without a window Harry has no way to gauge what time it is or how long he’s been in this room. He starts counting how many times his stomach growls. Later, when his scar begins to pulse, he counts them like the ticking of a clock. He falls back into sleep sometime after five thousand.

———

When Harry wakes for the second time his hands are unbound and there is a plate sitting in front of him. On it lies a roughly cut hunk of bread and beside it sits a _ glorious, glorious _ glass of water. 

Bread is practically half the sandwich, Harry reasons.

He takes a tentative sip of water and it takes every ounce of will in him not to drain it all immediately. He’ll need it to wash the bread down judging by how parched his mouth is. 

_ Glorious. _

His worry, it seems, is unnecessary, for as soon as he takes the first bite of stale bread the rest follows too quickly for him to even consider the glass beside it. Only after does he raise the glass to his lips and drain it for all it’s worth. 

He half hopes that the plate will refill, picturing the food appearing on the Great Hall’s tables as soon as the plate has emptied. Godric, what he wouldn’t give for a plate, just one plate, even a side plate would do, from a Hogwarts’ feast right now. Make it his last meal, he doesn’t mind. A goblet of pumpkin juice…

No, there is only bread. Was, he corrects, as this plate won’t refill, nor will the water glass beside it. He’s been fed enough to keep him alive, it seems, and that’s the only mercy he’ll be given.

As if to prove his point, binds seem to appear out of thin air, latching on to Harry by his wrists and pulling him roughly backward until he hits the grooved leg of the table, his head knocking painfully against it. They wrap around the length of wood, not tying themselves to it but welding directly into it, _ becoming _the table completely save for the small length extending to Harry’s trapped wrists.

Once again, he has enough slack to lie down, and not much else. The restraints are tight enough to chafe and seem to burn slightly even when he’s sitting completely stationary. Harry fears that if nightmares come and he begins to thrash in his sleep they might cut through his wrists entirely.

———

Time seems to turn liquid.

He sleeps and the nightmares do come, but they all bleed into each other—one scene to another scene, one face to another face, and that one's melting off the bone, and the next is bubbling up, being boiled alive beneath hot steam, and the next is grotesque and belongs to his mother, or Cedric, or Sirius, then he’s sitting in a coffin in a meadow that wilts and transforms into a graveyard in Little Hangleton then a kelp forest in the Great Lake that he’s lost in then a maze with a sphinx that recites a riddle he can never solve. Acromantulas come from behind him. The floor crumbles and sends him tumbling into a room full of flying keys that attack him, piercing his flesh mercilessly, smelling like metal and blood…

He stays this way for an amount of time he cannot even begin to guess at. He’s awake for only brief fragments of time before drifting back into restless sleep, and when he wakes his wrists are indeed bleeding. At first he thinks the binds seem to cut deeper each time, but eventually he stops being able to tell, and by then he can’t really remember how they looked in the first place. By then he can’t tell if it’s real.

Twice his hands are unbound and there is food in front of him. The first time he tried to eat slowly, dragging it out just to be free of his restraints for a while, which apparently grew impatient. He was bound again before he’d finished his bread, halfway through his glass of water. He dreamt of the plate refilling like the golden platters in the Great Hall, but in his dream he had to finish the bread every time it refilled and it never quit refilling. He ate until it was painful to breathe, then his stomach split open and the rest of him came spilling out of the chasm. He turned to liquid on the floor. Then he was in a sea of the vomit, drowning.

The next time, he ate the food as fast as he could and lay down with his eyes closed before it had a chance to refill. Just in case.

He drifts. Every time he wakes up his scar his throbbing, some times more insistently than others. He doesn’t bother counting them anymore. It’s easier to feel them like a drumbeat, to imagine music filling in the space around the pain like an orchestra. This doesn’t seem so much like a ticking clock.

He doesn’t bother thinking about clocks. Or time, because he knows that although time has turned to rippling fabric for him, in some universe it continues on, steady as a heartbeat, and in that universe, time is running out.

———

He wakes to five more meals. This doesn’t bode well, as Harry can’t imagine he’s getting daily meals. He guesses three per week at most, just judging by his awful thirst. The sandpaper of his throat. The hollowness in his stomach. They are the only thing he stays awake for.

He wonders, absently, if Voldemort is the one giving him nightmares. If it’s intentional.

He stops wondering because he doesn’t think it quite matters.

———

He is woken by his scar. There is no drumbeat here, no ticking of a clock, no heartbeat. This is fire, searing hot and agonizing. Voldemort is here.

Harry isn’t afraid, really. There isn’t much room for fear, not enough strength for fear. More than anything he’s irritated. He just wants this pain in his head to cease. 

He’s also quite thankful to be awake.

He can’t see him, but he can somehow sense his presence prowling somewhere in the outskirts of the room. It’s thick and heavy, suffocating and ice cold. He tastes like rot. 

“I’m pleased to see you’ve joined me,” Harry tries to say, but the words get caught in his throat like gravel and he has to stop to cough them out. On his second attempt they ring clear, although they still feel like knives to the inside of his throat.

When he isn’t dignified a response he continues. “I do hope you’ve brought me water and proper meal. The hospitality here is bitterly lacking.”

The table behind him bursts into flames, although all four legs are spared. Harry’s attention is drawn to his wrists in his attempt to scramble away. They are, indeed, bleeding. They’re scabbed over near the edges, but the flesh near the center is mottled and bloody. The ink on his wrist is pristine, as it will always be. Soul marks are protected by your own magic. Harry just wishes the bloody thing would quit hogging it all and let his magic protect the rest of him.

The heat is hot enough for Harry to smell his hair being singed. Then, just as quickly as it had burst alight, the flames are gone.

“Do not test me.”

Despite it all, the voice sends tremors down Harry’s spine.

“I’m not here to play games, Harry Potter. I am not here to entertain you; I believe I've provided you enough entertainment as it is.” Harry spits at the acknowledgement, just underhanded enough to not be outright. The nightmares weren’t natural. They were him. 

“I’m here for one reason, so let us get directly to the point. What I’m _ most _curious of, is the mark that lies on your wrist.”

So there it is, the very last thing Harry would have ever expected him to say.

The cloaked figure comes to a stop in front of him, nothing but the glint of his red eyes clear in the shadowed corners of the room. Harry hardly dares to breathe.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he grits out, wrists almost subconsciously pulling against their restraints, screaming against the open wounds.

“Now, now,” the figure hums. “Let’s not make this more difficult than it needs to be.” Suddenly Harry’s wrists are freed and he wastes no time in scrambling away from the charred table and backward to the opposite wall, still on the ground and leaning heavily against it. He somehow thinks his legs won’t be steady enough to stand.

Voldemort steps forward and Harry’s stomach churns in revulsion at the sight of snakelike features finally being washed in the dim light. “Show me your wrist.” His voice sounds almost gentle, soothing and sultry in a way that Harry could have never imagined and far, _ far _more terrifying than the alternative.

The thing is, Harry thought he was going to die. He was prepared for that. He thought he would be paraded in front of the Death Eaters to be humiliated and tortured in front of them. He thought he would be a grand statement for the Dark Lord, some showing that Voldemort could send the Order or wizarding Britain as a whole, to show them just how little hope they have left.

Harry knows he isn’t much, but he’s always been hope. He’s always been a symbol.

For a long time Harry has considered himself a con. The boy that they all considered the Chosen One was born the soulmate of the darkest wizard in the history of the wizarding world. He was the soulmate of a murderer, of a monster, of _ Voldemort _, and no amount of revulsion could have changed that. Harry’s image has always been a lie.

No one knew that, though, and so he remained what he is—a strength that no wizard has ever helped themselves from drawing from. Even as a scrawny boy in oversized muggle clothes. Even as a child. Without him, the light side of the war might lose hope completely.

Harry was sure Voldemort would use this to his full advantage.

But the serpent is asking for Harry’s wrist.

An even more sickening thought comes to Harry. If Voldemort knows, and merlin, if he’s asking he surely knows, he can use much more than Harry’s death as a weapon. Possibilities flood Harry’s mind, the simplest being revealing Harry to have been his soulmate all along. That, at least, could be forgivable. Harry didn’t choose his soulmate, after all. But what if Voldemort made it worse? What if he told the world that Harry had come to him voluntarily? That he wanted to be with his soulmate, that he had turned _ dark _to be with him. Harry’s death might not break the light side of the war, spite might have driven them, but his betrayal surely would. The Chosen One, The Boy Who Lived, joining the other side of the war.

Harry realizes that he will not even be allowed the relief of death.

When Harry doesn’t make any move towards him the serpent-like pupils glint menacingly. “I’ll ask once more, Harry, and then I won’t be so kind in my methods.” He waits a few beats before sighing almost regretfully. Harry stiffens. “Very well,” he sighs, “you stubborn child. _ Crucio.” _

The casual flick of his wand is so deceiving, and yet in seconds Harry’s sitting form has slid to the ground, back arched and body in burning, writhing, _ agony. _It’s a pain Harry has only felt twice before, both in the graveyard of Little Hangleton, refusing to plead at Voldemort’s hand.

Searing silver knives are penetrating every inch of his skin, his bones are on fire or fracturing over every bit of their surface or gone entirely—he can’t tell. His scar is splitting, probably tearing his skull in two pieces, right down the middle of his face, over his nose, which must be bleeding. Harry would be surprised if every one of his orifices isn’t bleeding. He doesn’t realize that he’s screaming until a few seconds after his mouth had opened. Everything seems delayed, moving slowly.

Harry wishes to die. He wishes for anything other than this—anything in the world to make the pain stop. 

When it does, finally, Harry can do nothing but take heaving gasps for breath, his body still tingling although the pain has left him. It is no small feat to stop himself from continuing to writhe on the ground. His scar is the only thing still burning.

Somewhere, distantly, he hears Voldemort _ tsk _above him. “Now, Harry, that was no fun for you at all, was it?” Apparently not expecting an answer, he continues. “I’m going to ask for your wrist now, and you’re going to be a good boy and give it to me.” 

When Harry makes no response Voldemort’s footsteps draw nearer. A boot presses down on one of Harry’s exposed hands, the arm opposite of his mark. It applies just enough pressure for Harry to wince, to be sure his bones have creaked. Just enough pressure to get the message across—Voldemort is not above torturing Harry, soulmate or not. There is plenty of torture that can be done short of death. “Lift your right hand, Harry.”

Harry wants to say no. He wants to keep fighting with the knowledge that this will change everything, that Voldemort’s discovery will be the end of him, the end of everything. He wants to spit, but the hopelessness of his situation is so obvious.

Harry finds then the sickening realization that there is not much fight in him when someone isn’t at risk, for there’s no one here to play hero for and Harry cannot quite find it in him to want to be. This fight is already lost. Voldemort must already know, or at least suspect, if he’s so intent to see Harry’s wrist. All he knows is he’s been in and out of consciousness for days, maybe weeks, he’s weakened by hunger and thirst, he’s done nothing but sleep and yet is _ exhausted_, and he can feel the pain of _ crucio _ fresh beneath his skin. Enduring it for nothing but pride seems a silly choice, even for a Gryffindor. 

Not that his Hogwarts’ house matters much to him here. Not that anything does.

His scar is still throbbing insistently, aching and burning, and Harry is sure now that he can feel blood dripping from it. Voldemort is too close. 

The boot presses down once more, and this time the pressure is enough for Harry to whimper. He barely spares a few seconds of thought before lifting his right hand. 

Harry knows he is weak.

Voldemort smiles darkly and steps over Harry, crouching down next to the raven-haired boy and watching him with what can only be described as hunger. Harry shudders. He can only imagine the sick pleasure Voldemort must get from finally having him here, chained and at his complete mercy. Harry wishes he were dead.

Slowly, tauntingly, spidery fingers reach out and brush the top of Harry’s hand. Harry isn’t met with pain as he expected he would be—the pain in his head actually fades to barely more than a low burn. It isn’t pleasure, but there’s a definite settling to his body, an instinctive reaction to Voldemort’s touch. The mortification and disgust he feels at that don’t even have the power to churn his stomach. Just the brush of the monster’s fingers is cathartic enough to leave him numb to them.

He wonders when this happened. He surely wasn’t soothed when Voldemort touched him in the graveyard last year.

“Turn your hand, Harry,” Voldemort breathes, and oddly transfixed as he is, Harry does.

There they are, two words written in script. 

Voldemort does the very last thing Harry expects in that moment—he laughs. It’s low and dark, but a laugh all the same. The sound is anything but pleasant.

His fingers dance across Harry’s skin, up and down his forearm, over his palm, tracing everything but the deep green, his eyes burning with a morbid fascination. Harry feels his stomach roll at the sight, but all the same has to acknowledge that something in him doesn’t loathe it as he wishes it would. There’s a piece of him that simply yearns for the contact, a deep pull in his stomach for Voldemort to _ touch _ the ink _ , _ just for a moment. Voldemort doesn’t grant it.

Harry knows it’s the mark. He knows this isn’t him. He still feels disgusted with himself.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Voldemort says. His voice is breathy. “All I have ever craved is to finally see you fall, and here you are with a mark on your arm that I can do nothing but protect.” His eyes raise to Harry’s. “Do you feel the same, little one? Or would you still watch me fall?”

“Of course I would,” Harry spits, albeit weakly, he’s still victorious at finding the strength to speak at all. “I’d let them bury us in the same grave if it would settle your mind, but you _ will fall._”

There is a roiling within his red, red iris’, but aside from that Voldemort’s face gives away nothing. He steps away from Harry.

“H_arry Potter.” _ It’s spoken in Parseltongue and Harry can’t recall whether it’s new or began several sentences ago. “_Y__ou _ are the one who has fallen. And I will show you.” Harry’s breathing picks up as the man tilts his head to one side. “But not today. _ Crucio.” _

There’s a flick of his wand, and by the time Harry can separate his body from the pain the man has already gone. 

———

Harry lays awake for a long time, thinking about soulmarks. To be more specific, he thinks about Voldemort’s.

There must have been something in the prophecy. Everything changed when the orb broke, and it’s becoming clearer that it isn’t because Harry was prophesied to kill him. If it were, Harry would be dead, the same as he was always meant to be.

No, Voldemort knows. His soulmark has something to do with that bloody prophecy and now he knows, but he doesn’t seem to share Harry’s security in his immunity. Something in Voldemort fears the mark and what it implies. He fears that it may have power over him, and that—_only _that—is the reason Harry is alive. 

The layers of irony are layered so thick Harry can’t even begin to sort through them. Instead, he laughs. He laughs loudly, and in the quiet, creaking house it feels thunderous enough to make the roof cave in.

_Let it fall, _he thinks, and he laughs and laughs. _Let it kill me, let the rubble crush me, let the dust suffocate me, let it end here. _Harry thinks about himself standing in Ollivander’s at eleven years old, awed as the wandmaker told him of _soulmates, _because he had never been loved and the idea of someone born to love him was brilliant. He marvelled at the words on his arm, scoured his school books for the spell, trying to find what it could possibly mean. Searching for the spell that would lead them to him. Sometimes when strangers called him The Boy Who Lived he would laugh to himself, thinking of the one letter he could change. _No, _he would think, _The Boy Who Loved. Someday I will be The Boy Who Loved. _

Oh, the beautiful ironies. The Boy Who Lived. The Boy Who Loved. Now, he wishes he were neither.

Harry’s body shakes. He laughs and he laughs.

When he dreams he sees the walls crumble with the very force of it. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	4. Unburned

This time Harry isn’t trapped in sleep. He fell into rest after Voldemort left, surely to sleep off the exhaustion of the Cruciatus curse, but he woke easily. There’s no food waiting for him, but he’s pleased to see that he isn’t restrained. He wakes on the floor exactly where Voldemort left him.

He’s strong enough to stand. There are a lot of words that Harry would have used to describe standing in the past—though perhaps not _ a lot, _as standing isn’t a very notable thing—but _ incredible _ wouldn’t have been one of them. Not _ miraculous, _ either. Surely not _ exhilarating._

Today Harry will gladly claim all three. What a gift it is to move. He makes his way around the room, touching just to marvel at having his hands freed. He pauses at the sight of his wrists—wounds healed and blood-free. He turns his wrists over a few times. There’s the soulmark, untouched as usual, but any signs of the deep wounds present on his wrist just a short time ago are gone; Harry doesn’t even have a scar to show for it. He contemplates for a moment. They had to have been healed magically, but Voldemort healing his wounds? The idea is about as plausible as Harry waking up with his wand beside him.

He marvels at them for a few moments before dropping his arms back to his side. He won’t get any answers just by looking at them, after all.

He touches the table. It’s not even slightly charred despite being engulfed in flames just a short time ago. Magical fire, he supposes. It probably would have burned Harry if he’d touched it—he certainly felt the heat of them anyway. The wood must have been protected.

The table is the only furnishing in the room. It’s a moderately sized space with a high ceiling. The wallpaper and carpet look like they were once lavish, though now both are peeling up at the corners and faded.

He circles the room a few more times before he builds up the courage to touch the door. He doesn’t know what security measures there are and isn’t too keen on finding out, but it isn’t as if he’s going to ignore the only door of the room he’s been locked in for Merlin knows how long.

It’s a trap, probably—Harry can’t see any alternative explanation as to why his hands are untied—but he’s a Gryffindor, which really only means that all common sense becomes irrelevant when he’s presented with something he knows full well is dangerous. It’s in the description.

He really is an idiot, he notes absently, then touches the door anyway.

And… nothing happens. 

Absolutely nothing.

The door is smooth and polished still, not reflecting the worn state of the rest of the room. It’s a little odd, but could be contributed to any hexes or curses it’s enchanted with. Although, it doesn’t seem to be enchanted with anything of consequence. He doesn’t feel even the telltale buzz of magic. There’s simply… nothing. It’s ordinary. Which only makes Harry all the more apprehensive to touch the doorknob. If the door isn’t tampered with the doorknob surely is. Voldemort would be sure to punish Harry for his curiosity. He’ll find a way to punish Harry for anything, undoubtedly. He’s already touched the door, he figures. He might as well push all of his luck.

The doorknob seems unaffected as well.

Harry is puzzled. Surely Voldemort wouldn’t trust a purely muggle door to ensure Harry’s imprisonment. Door knobs can be broken, or their locks picked if Harry had the correct materials. A lock is unreliable. Harry thinks there surely must be a catch, and he isn’t keen on finding out. Even so, Harry gives the door knob a quick twist, knowing it will catch in the lock anyway.

It opens.

The knob turns and the door opens.

Surely, _ surely _there’s no way.

It isn’t possible. There’s not even a slight chance Voldemort would have been so careless as to not lock the door, though it’s more likely he forgot to place the curse or ward back over the entrance. Even then, the idea that he would have made such a foolish mistake—it’s preposterous.

Which can only mean this was intentional. He _ wants _ Harry to walk into this trap, and he must believe without a doubt that Harry could never resist the temptation of it. He’d be right, of course. When has Harry resisted anything? Even without a wand or a weapon—anything at all to defend himself with—he’ll walk directly into whatever game Voldemort is playing. It’s in his nature. He’s aware of this. He knows where this is leading, but this isn’t reason enough for Harry to stay in this prison, hungry and weak and _ bored. _

He opens the door to an empty hallway. It looks similar to the room—unfurnished and dilapidated. Both sides of the hallways seem to be blocked off, which means all Harry is faced only with a long corridor lined with doors. Doors upon doors upon doors. He’s reminded of the entrance room in the Department of Mysteries with it’s twelve identical doors, each revealing to them a new horror. Out of curiosity he counts the doors lining this corridor. There are twelve. Of course.

He supposes he better get on with it.

The end of the corridor seems a much longer walk than it looks. He touches the door at the end, feeling for magic or some sort of hidden exit, but there’s only a solid wall seemingly completely ordinary. He steps way, turning apprehensively to the door on its right. He reaches out for the knob more nervously than he’d like to admit, but it proves pointless. The door is locked. He moves to the next, which is locked, then the next, all the way down the corridor filled with locked doors. Just when he’s beginning to suspect they’re _ all _locked, door eight breaks the pattern; the knob turns. He freezes and slowly turns the knob back to its original position, listening intently to any noises inside. Realistically Harry is sure there’s a silencing charm cast around the room, but he tries anyway. When he hears nothing he’s suddenly very, very afraid. He steps away, continuing down the line of doors all the while knowing what will happen—every door will be locked. Door eight is his only option.

So Harry returns to the door. There’s truly nothing else to do. 

He stands for a few minutes with his ear against the crack of the door, but there’s nothing; no movement, no voices. Just an eerie quiet. Harry plans on opening the door just wide enough to look through but caution at this point is only futile, so he opens the door wide and faces the room.

It’s a stark contrast to the rest of the house, or at least the parts of the house he’s seen. There’s a large fireplace at the back wall, lit and roaring; he can feel the warmth from the doorway. It looks like it’s been refurbished; the wallpaper looks brand new and the carpet is full and soft. There’s a tall shelf lined with books against one wall, a long couch, a large chair, a carved mahogany end table, and Voldemort sits calmly in the armchair. 

It’s high-backed and cushioned, adorned with lace for the trim and a deep emerald green. Voldemort looks like royalty sat on it, the king of monsters. Draped across his lap and shoulders is the largest snake Harry has ever seen.

“Harry,” he says silkily. “Kind of you to join us.”

Harry can’t look away from the snake. “My pleasure,” he says without thinking.

“This is my pet, Nagini.” Then he switches to a hiss, clearly speaking to her. She responds, the noise enough to give Harry chills. He realizes, somewhat belatedly, that he has no idea what they’re saying.

Just yesterday he spoke to Voldemort in Parseltongue without immediately realizing it. Not understanding it now… it doesn’t make any sense.

“Nagini, my sweet,” Voldemort says, and Harry only understands because it’s spoken in English. “How would you like to taste Harry?”

Harry immediately stumbles back, but the door has already been shut and he backs directly into it, reaching behind him and fumbling blindly for the knob only to feel that it’s locked. Of course it is. This was a trap, after all.

“Don’t kill him, understood? Just a bite. Just enough to see him bleed.” Harry can only imagine what ‘just a bite’ means to a snake that size. Voldemort won’t let him die, surely, but he remembers so clearly the sight of Arthur Weasley bleeding out on the marble floors of the Department of Mysteries, a gruesome bite wound to his stomach. The size of it… how deeply it penetrated his flesh… 

Harry thinks he might vomit. Smoothly, languidly, Nagini glides off of Voldemort and onto the ground, approaching Harry slowly. She’s hissing and Harry can’t understand a word of it. Voldemort is hissing and it sounds like nothing but a snake’s tongue. 

“Just a bite,” he warns, transitioning smoothly back to English. Nagini comes nearer.

Harry sees only a flash of fangs, of an unhinged jaw opened wide, before the pain cripples him.

———

Harry’s eyes are open when he comes back to himself. It seems he was awake only seconds ago. He can’t imagine he dozed off, but it’s possible. His body is drained.

There is nothing Harry wants to do more than stand. He doesn’t think he’s stood since he fell in the Department of Mysteries. He’s been chained, too weak, or too afraid of Voldemort to rise from the floor even once since his imprisonment. His legs must be weakened.

When he pushes himself off of the floor he winces in pain at the weight it puts on his wrists. He glances down to see his wounds still open, although they do look slightly improved. They’re scabbing up in the more shallow areas and he’s sure that if he had a wet rag to clean the blood off they wouldn’t look nearly so gruesome. 

His first attempt on his feet sends him tumbling back down to the ground, landing painfully on his tailbone. He curses then tries again, leaning against the wall for support. This time his legs hold. He’s shaky on his feet, but the feel of it is enough to make him grin. He paces the room simply for the joy of being able to. He stops at the table, badly charred by the fire Voldemort cursed it with the last time he visited Harry. Only the surface seems burnt, though; the rest is relatively unharmed. Fortunate, probably. The wood looks expensive.

The room looks the same as it has since his arrival—dilapidated and deserted. He spends a few minutes pacing the perimeter, tracing the walls with his hands and carefully avoiding any contact with the door. Unsurprisingly, Harry isn’t keen on finding out what curses are there to deter him. He can feel the magic buzzing as he passes. He’s a Gryffindor, but he knows a lost battle when he sees one. For now, he’s staying exactly where he’s meant to be.

Harry is _ bored, _though. So very bored. He thinks sleep might be a better option than sitting awake, but with the prior magic gone he doesn’t feel any fatigue at all. He suspects it will be a few hours before he can even try falling asleep. For now he’s awake. Awake and loathingly restless.

He tries counting the slats of wood that make up the floor but loses track almost as soon as he’s begun. He makes his way to the corner and begins peeling at the wallpaper where it lifts from the corners, but this makes him feel somewhat guilty. The house is damaged enough without him abusing it. Hours pass like this, and eventually he gives up and finds himself sitting cross-legged on the wooden table, staring forlornly at the sealed door. There’s nothing to do.

Harry has never dealt with isolation well. He’s never dealt with pent-up energy well, either. He thinks he might drive himself insane, locked up in this room with no stimulation at all. He still isn’t tired. Sleep would be a welcome escape.

He traces his fingers over the table, running his hands up and down the smooth wood, just enjoying the texture of it beneath his fingers. It really is an expensive table, Harry can guess that much just from the feel of it. The feel of the wood, which is… 

Not burnt.

The wood isn’t burnt.

Harry is sure—he’s _ positive_—that the table was burnt just a few hours ago. It was burnt when he woke up, he’d seen Voldemort set it on fire right beside him. Unless there were a glamour cast on it there’s no possible way it could have changed, and no one has entered this room but Harry. _ Harry _surely didn’t do it. He doesn’t have a wand, and accidental magic doesn’t just happen like that, without any triggers and aimed at random objects. Even if that were the case Harry is sure there have been anti-magic wards set around this room. Voldemort wouldn’t take any chances.

It doesn’t make sense.

He continues looking at the table, puzzling and unable to come up with any explanation. Next he notices his wrists. Healed.

That’s impossible.

What did Voldemort _ do? _And what was the purpose?

The only theories Harry can dig up can’t be possible—that time somehow converted back to before Harry was brought here, the table never set on fire and his wrists never injured by the restraints. Or that he had fixed it all _ himself_, without intending or even noticing it. That Voldemort had done it, which is at least more likely than time manipulation, but he still has no plausible explanation as to _ why _he would have done, other than to play with Harry’s head, but what would that accomplish? Surely he’d rather just torture him.

Then the door opens. A man stands there. His skin is waxy and stretched tight over his gaunt face, his cheekbones sticking out at violent angles and looking extremely malnourished. Framing the sunken eyes deep-set in his face are eye-bags dark enough to be mistaken as bruises. Along with it all is his hair, hanging down to his elbows and matted, absolutely filthy. There are streaks of dirt across his cheeks and his lips are pale and cracked.

Standing in the doorway is Sirius Black.

But not really, not Sirius Black as Harry had known him. This man is the Sirius Black that snuck into Hogwarts and slashed the Fat Lady right through the center of her canvas. This is the Sirius Black that squatted in the Shrieking Shack after escaping Azkaban. This is Sirius Black gone half mad. He isn’t Harry’s.

Harry’s on his feet and around the table, eyes locked on Sirius but frozen solid. The man doesn’t spare him so much as a glance. It’s as if Harry is wearing an invisibility cloak—as if he isn’t there at all.

Through the door behind him comes none other than Bellatrix Lestrange. This Bellatrix looks the same as when Harry last saw her, wild curls bouncing and eyes crazed in the Department of Mysteries. She’s grinning maniacally, dragging someone in by their hair and laughing at their screams, gripping roughly as they struggle. Harry backs towards the wall, trembling at the sight of her—trembling at the sight of Sirius next to her, watching it all passively, looking almost bored by the entire affair. Sirius hasn’t talked to Bellatrix in _ years. _She would have killed him. This is- this is wrong. Everything about this is wrong.

They enter the room completely and Bellatrix slams the door behind her with magic, the sound loud enough to pang in Harry’s head. The figure continues to struggle, starting to scream, and Harry is rendered useless in his shock. Those screams- those screams are his.

There’s Harry, dressed in the same robes he wore to the Department of Mysteries, the same robes he’s wearing now in better condition. He’s screaming himself hoarse, fighting with a strength that Harry marvels at now. He’s healthier than Harry. Harry was always slim, of course, but now he’s scrawny. Malnourished. His knees are knobbly and his ribs show without him trying; he looks how he did as an eight year-old living with the Dursleys. This Harry has substance to him. Muscle. At least fifteen pounds more than the boy backed against the wall, shaking.

Bellatrix throws Harry—the other Harry—to the floor, cackling. Sirius is silent, but there’s a cruel smile present on his face. “Look at him, Siri-” she coos, “he’s pathetic.” 

Sirius nods in agreement and he’s suddenly completely unrecognizable. Harry feels as if he’s looking at a man he’s never met. He’s never seen him this way. He’s seen him filled with hatred—facing Peter Pettigrew in the Shrieking Shack, swearing he’s going to kill him—he’s seen him in the midst of battle, exhilarated and joyful at the freedom of it. This is different. This is a calm, sick cruelty, a pleasure at the simple idea of hurting someone—hurting _ Harry. _ He isn’t crazed with the rush like Bellatrix, no—he’s savoring it.

_ Who is this man? _

He casts a stinging hex, catching on his left cheek as he cries out in pain. The fight has already been beaten out of him; in its absence is only fear.

Bellatrix flicks her wand and Harry—the Harry of now—braces himself for whatever curse is about to hit the boy next, but there’s nothing. Instead the restraints that he now knows intimately sprout from the table, catching him around his wrists and dragging him backwards, his head hitting the leg of the table with a sharp crack. This leaves him dazed, on the verge of passing out. 

Bellatrix smiles joyfully. “Let’s go, Siri. Our Lord will want to see us.” She turns but pauses at Sirius’ lack of movement. He stands where he was, watching Harry with his head tilted, that same look on his face.

He hums. “_Crucio,” _ he murmurs, and Harry is screaming again, back arching and wrists pulling against the restraints. Harry has to look away from the sight, his stomach turning over. _ That is not my Sirius_, he reminds himself, but it sounds more like a prayer.

“Now we can go,” Sirius says, and they do.

Harry is sitting cross-legged in the center of the charred table, staring at the shut door with a glazed look. He shakes his head, sighing in frustration. He’s bored enough now to be losing track of his head entirely. He tries to remember where his thought process left off.

He doesn’t even notice his body trembling so violently that his teeth are clacking together painfully, or the blood under his fingernails from where they’ve been buried in the wounds of his wrist.

———

When Voldemort comes Harry’s almost glad for the entertainment.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting in that same room with nothing at all to do. At one point a meal appears, the same as it has been—bread and water. His eyes lingered for a few beats too long on the glass that holds the water. _ How sharp is broken glass? _ he wondered, but he was far too thirsty to waste time on drinking, and the glass was gone the moment he’d swallowed the last mouthful.

After the meal came more time alone. He sat stationary for long enough that his stomach started growling again, and yet he never got tired. It felt like days, but that couldn’t be right—he hadn’t slept a minute, although he’d been spacing out more and more frequently. He’d come back to himself, sometimes in the place he left off or another part of the room entirely. He spent a long while considering the idea that Voldemort spelled him awake and the blank periods in his memory are his body’s attempts to find rest. He spends a lot of time thinking about what Ginny told him in second year about the jumps in her memory, how she had no recollection of what she’d done while she was gone. His wrists aren’t healing in the slightest. The wounds seem to be getting worse, even, but it’s become increasingly harder to tell.

Harry is bored beyond all comprehension.

So when Voldemort comes he’s almost excited at the prospect, although he has no doubt it won’t be a pleasant interaction. He thinks that at this point even pain is preferable to this madness.

He wastes no time. There’s no greeting. No taunting.

“How long have you known?” Voldemort asks. His voice sounds dangerous even with little to no inflection.

Harry is so glad for conversation that he jumps straight into picking a fight knowing full well where it will get him. He almost craves the pain at this point. Anything—_anything_—is more pleasurable than his restlessness.

“From the moment I realized it was the killing curse branded on my arm, not some spell that I got to marvel at until I met _the one. _I didn’t get to wonder; I always knew. Didn’t you, Voldemort? Or were you not so clever?” 

Red eyes blaze and he flicks his wand to send a stinging hex at Harry. He hisses at the pain, watching the angry welt grow on his skin. Voldemort’s hex is far more powerful than the typical Stinging Hexes he would shoot back and forth with Malfoy, that kids would throw at the person as few seats in front of them during class. It’s loaded with power.

He isn’t deterred. “Were you like me?” he asks, for no reason other than the fact that he enjoys it and the knowledge that he’ll inevitably be tortured anyway. “Did you stay awake at night thinking about your soulmate? If they might be beautiful? A girl or a boy? If they would sweep you off your feet when you least expect it? Did you spend hours of time thinking about a spell that you were unable to ask anyone about without fear of giving away the secret of your mark? Were you so joyous at the thought of someone born to love you just to have it ripped out of your hands?

“No?” he continues. “Godrick, that’s a shame then. You must have so loathed the idea of love. Lucky Harry Potter, right? A child born and raised without love and denied the one thing that was promised to him. What’s it like to be a monster, Voldemort? I envy you, truly. How I’d love to feel nothing.”

The Cruiatus comes then as Harry expected it would.

Most pain is adaptable. If Voldemort were carving shapes into his skin he could eventually become numb to it—or at least number than he was. Most pain gets easier as you learn what it feels like--as you learn to expect what’s coming, but the Cruciatus is no such pain. Every time is like the first time. Each time you still wish for death. There is no numbing yourself to silver knives and fire and tearing limbs all occurring simultaneously. This agony isn’t like slow torture. Harry would let Voldemort break his limbs in half one at a time before he asked for the Cruciatus.

Your screams never come quieter. Your vocal chords still tear all the same. There is no room for thought, no room to tell yourself that this will end soon enough, that you’ve beared it before. There’s no room for anything but pain and the desperate wish for anything to free you of it.

Harry, of course, is only freed from it when Voldemort sees fit to let him up for air.

“You’re a rotten thing, you know—hard-headed, arrogant, and childish. I might have my Death Eaters place bets on how long it will take to break that. Perhaps I can bring you to Malfoy manor and let them each have a turn, pass power around the table and watch as you scream. I won’t drive you to insanity, of course. Bellatrix tells me how very boring sweet Alice and Frank Longbottom were afterward.” He twirls his wand between his fingers, bony and stark-white spider limbs. “No,” he says softly, “I’d like to take my time with you.”

“You’re vile,” Harry spits.

“Yes, you keep reminding me.”

“I can’t wait for you to die.”

He hits Harry with another stinging hex, more powerful than the last. It catches him on the stomach and he actually cries out. “If I die, you die.”

“I’ve had five years to become acquainted with the idea, thanks.”

“_Crucio_.” Voldemort seems to be doing it for nothing but the simple pleasure of it at this point. 

Harry isn’t able to speak when it lets up. No, the Cruciatus doesn’t get easier as you get used to it; if anything it gets worse. Harry is heaving breaths, struggling just to get them past his throat which has seemed to close off entirely. The most he can hope for is Voldemort enjoying Harry’s pain enough to want to keep it for himself. To imagine enduring the curse over and over again, once for every Death Eater in Voldemort’s inner circle—it’s enough to drive Harry to insanity before the opportunity is even imminent.

“I’m almost thankful I can’t kill you,” Voldemort murmurs. “This is far more satisfying.”

Harry doesn’t have the strength to respond in any way at all. He can’t speak. He can’t spit. Can’t even look at Voldemort, really. His body still burns.

Voldemort takes advantage of this, crouching beside Harry and grabbing his right forearm to turn it wrist-up, eyes skipping right over Harry’s bleeding wrists to trace the words written on Harry’s arm with a morbidly fascinated look, and fuck, Harry loathes himself. He loathes himself for the way the pain seems to trickle out of him with Voldemort’s skeleton fingers gripping his forearm. The strength he regains from Voldemort’s touch is enough for him to jerk his arm away, to crawl backwards and away from the snake. It isn’t enough to stand and the pain returns immediately after the loss of contact, the brief strength following shortly after.

But at least the monster isn’t _ touching _him.

He braces himself for another hex, or another curse if he’s very unlucky, but Voldemort simply stands, a sinister smile half tilting his lips. He does nothing but watch Harry for a few moments that seem to stretch on forever, in which Harry sits frozen and filled with dread. 

Eventually he turns with a sweep of his cloak. At the door he pauses. “Until next time, Harry.”

Then Voldemort is gone.

——-

Harry is standing beside the table, wrists smooth and the wood wholly unburned. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	5. Drifting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> five thousand words for the new year. happy happy decade everyone (:

He wanders endlessly. It’s rare for him to see the peeling wallpaper lately—he only seems to come to it when food appears on the charred table at the center of the room. Harry eats as if he’s on autopilot. There’s no urgency in it anymore, but he’s pleased to see the dishes don’t grow impatient with him as they used to. They wait for him to finish, even if it takes hours. The truth is Harry isn’t sure how long it takes. He isn’t sure how often they come. He isn’t sure of anything relating to the passage of time, as his memory is nothing but blurs of light and color and voices that he can’t remember the ownership of. Sometimes he remembers. He remembers Cedric being thrown into the room with him and chained, but Harry couldn’t get them off of him. His wrists bled and bled and Harry’s were already healed. He bled out, Harry thinks, but that part is blurry. If Cedric weren’t already dead Harry might think that was real, too. 

If Cedric is really dead. If it ever happened at all. Harry doesn’t know.

Harry eats his food and when he’s done minutes or hours later the glasses disappear. Harry spends a lot of time looking at the glass that holds the water. He might break it if he weren’t so tired and weak. Even if he did have the strength to break it he surely wouldn’t have the strength to do anything further. Harry can hardly make it to the table. Harry can hardly remember his own name.

Time passes or doesn’t, Harry’s memory feels how his vision would if he were to take off his glasses and ride a broomstick through London very quickly. He remembers and he doesn’t. He’s aware and he isn’t. When he sees peeling wallpaper there is either food or a nightmare waiting for him in the space and he never knows which until he’s thrown in the midst of it. When the food is all he sees he sits waiting for the trick to come. If nothing comes he sits wondering if the food is real at all. 

He measures the passage of time by how thin he gets, how weak he becomes, and how long his hair has grown. It’s the only thing that he can trust to change steadily, although sometimes time jumps and he’s ten pounds lighter than he was the last time he remembered checking. It can’t have been too long, now, as he isn’t dead yet, and at the speed he’s been losing fat it would surely only take a few months, maybe less, to truly kill him. He guesses it’s been a few weeks, maybe a month or two.

He wanders. They aren’t all bad, you know, the places he goes. It would be easier if he were still trapped in nightmares, but the nightmares went away a long time ago. You can’t have nightmares unless you’re sleeping, and Harry isn’t sleeping. Not that he’s aware of, anyway. He’s just… drifting. Constantly drifting.

No, there are good ones. There are times when he’s with his mom and dad and Voldemort never existed at all. He sees Christmases and holidays and ordinary nights curled up by the fire. He sees himself growing up with magic, of his father giving him toy wands and miniature brooms that hardly leave the ground. He sees his mother singing him to sleep, because he just knows she could sing, he just knows it. Her voice is soft as a hummingbird, sweet as a bee’s honey… his mother sounds like spring.

He never knows it’s a lie. He doesn’t. That world is his world, that life his life, that love his love to give and receive and treasure. What he sees is often more real than what he knows must be the only true thing—peeled wallpaper and worn carpet and a charred oak wood table; stale bread and cheeks like sandpaper. When you set the image of Ginny spinning wildly amidst the flowers in Mrs. Weasley’s garden beside the image of Harry in a room tinted gray with abandonment and the roof caving in under the very despair of it, the latter is what seems like a dream. It looks like a nightmare Harry would have woken up to last summer. It looks like a figment of trauma. It looks far too torturous so have ever really existed.

Harry drifts. He wanders. He’s haunted by visions of Hermionie and Ron torturing him or Dean Thomas laughing as Harry sinks below a large sea of flobberworms that fill up his mouth. He’s gifted with Sirius at his fifth birthday party, his skin flushed from a few too many pints and head thrown back laughing. His mother singing like springtime… the brother he might have had humming along in the kitchen… 

He sees everything. Everything and nothing, because none of it is left when he comes back.

This is his world, now. Everything is Harry with his glasses off flying through London—so much that would surely be beautiful if he could only make it out.

———

Harry thinks he may be going mad. 

He wakes up in a lavish room. There’s ornate wallpaper covering the confines of the space interrupted by tall, carved oak furniture. Against one wall is a bookcase stacked to the top with literature pressed tightly against each other. There’s a china cabinet opposite it stocked with piles of pale, flower adorned dishes. Beside the bookshelf is a velvet reading chair colored deep green. Pieces of classic art are arranged across the walls.

In the center of the room is an oak table, elegant and polished. It sits there effortlessly, surrounded by eight tall chairs just as intricate in their carving. Harry pulls out the seat at the head of the table and sits down gingerly, running his fingers over the surface of the table. It draws more of his attention than the rest of the room for reasons he’s unsure of.

He doesn’t know where he is.

Harry really does think he’s going mad. Everything seems off lately. He wakes up in strange places. Somehow he remembers waking up in strange places before but can never recall where those places were or what they held. Odd things will tug at his memory that he’s unable to pull to the surface. Things will change as he’s looking at them or looking away. Everything seems somehow plastic as if he’s standing on a set, or like a mirage, as if what he’s looking at isn’t there at all. This room seems too perfect to be real. These things hold significance, they mean something, and he thinks that somewhere he _ knows_, but it’s buried deep enough that it’s nothing but an itch.

Harry doesn’t feel right. He feels like an intruder in his own body, sometimes as if he’s watching the entire thing play out like a stage-show even when he’s the one acting them out. Sometimes his skin feels like it doesn’t belong to him.

Harry thinks something must be coming, that there’s some purpose for him sitting in a bizarre room with no memory of what it is or how he ended up there. He thinks there must be a trick or a trap ready to spring upon him, but nothing does. He lingers there at the head of the table for a long time, feeling horribly out of place, but eventually moves to sit in the much more comfortable chair beside the bookshelf. He considers opening the bookcase to find something to read but the thought is gone the moment he’s had it, as if he’d never thought it at all. Instead he sits. He waits. He’s seized with a fear that the world is ending, although he isn’t sure where it comes from or why and has no evidence to support his claim. It grasps him and he latches onto it in return because it seems the most logical thing he’s thought so far. Of course Harry isn’t mad—it’s everything else that’s going wrong. Harry is just in the midst of it. If anything the imminent downfall of his universe is a relieving thought. 

He nods, completely content, settling back into the cushions and waiting for the world to end.

———

Voldemort doesn’t return to Harry for a long time.

He doesn’t open the door. He doesn’t check on him or have anyone else do so instead, not that many know of his whereabouts. A good number of his Death Eaters and the Order saw Voldemort apparate Harry and himself out of the Department of Mysteries, but they have no knowledge of the Riddle house. They wouldn’t know where to look even if they were brave enough to try, and he can guarantee not a single one of his Death Eaters would be brave enough to try. They wait for orders because they fear him. As they should.

No, Voldemort tells no one. He sends bread and water up to the room in sporadic patterns and is assured of Harry’s well-being by the empty dishes that return. He doesn’t want to look at the pathetic thing. He’s disgusted by the very thought of him.

Voldemort knows that if he was in his right mind he’d be torturing him, or at least marveling at the sight of the boy so damaged, _ something_, but he isn’t in his right mind.

He feels that the mark has given the little lion too much power.

Voldemort is captivated by the words on his wrist as he has never been captivated by anything. He’s felt obsession, of course—of his Horcruxes, of power—but this isn’t quite that. The soulmark is fascinating. It’s enrapturing. Voldemort craves nothing in this world more than he craves to touch it.

It’s getting exponentially worse. Some urge—some _ instinct_—within him is pushing steadily closer to the surface. It’s all he’s been able to do to stay away. From a distance it’s been manageable, but he somehow thinks that his self-control will wane the moment he lays eyes on Harry, hatred be damned. 

It isn’t the boy, he knows; he despises him, but the mark on his wrist is some sort of beacon. It reaches toward Voldemort like the curse he’s always known it to be. The lack of control, the lack of coherent thought when faced with it, when the idea of it even crosses his mind—it’s a weakness he resents like nothing else. Despite the endless research he spent on these wretched things he’s never heard of this, he supposes because it’s so very rare for anyone to resist the connection. It’s unheard of, really. Wizards are raised on the knowledge of soulmates—they see it modeled in every adult they know, they hear about it in whispers passed between children. Not one wizard-raised child has been taught to resist their mark. Such a thing is practically sinful. Finding your soul and bonding with them is simply the way it’s meant to be.

So, no, Voldemort wasn’t warned. He wasn’t warned of the agony that comes with this resistance. 

It’s becoming harder to focus on anything with the thought of Harry upstairs alone, his mark bared. It’s been weeks now, hasn’t it? Voldemort has lost track, and Salazar, it’s that _ mark_. The longer he goes without it the more blurred everything becomes. It’s driving him half mad. His hatred of Harry and his desire for that mark become less and less distinct every day. He starts to wonder if one is really worth the other.

Voldemort almost wonders if it would be easier to touch it, to cave just once. Whatever this craving is, it can be satisfied and he can move on. Perhaps if he were to touch it things would clear themselves. Once he satisfies this awful itch his mind will be clear enough to reason these things out, because he can’t even _ think _lately.

The longer he ponders it the more persuasive his arguments seem to become. Yes. Yes, he thinks he will. Just for a moment, just for a second he’ll lay his fingers on it. Then he’ll return to his priorities and be able to focus again. For once.

He hates Harry, he hates this wretched mark, he hates that the bond cannot seem to recognize when a man is incapable of love and must curse him with it anyway, but something must be done.

Just for a moment.

———

One moment Harry is curled up in a green velvet armchair waiting for the world to end and the next he’s against the peeling, faded wall, sitting on the worn, ugly carpet, skinny and shivering in a world that has already ended. The hallucination fades from memory in seconds, then Harry comes back into his prison and looks at the colors that seem to be getting paler by the day. The world somehow lacks color. Perhaps it’s his eyes.

At some point Nagini appears and is draped atop him, but he can’t remember her entrance or how she got there and Voldemort is nowhere within Harry’s eyesight. “_ Speak to me,” _she tells Harry.

“_What is there to say? _ ” Harry asks. “_I’ve gone mad. I’m losing myself, and I’m so cold all the time._”

“_Cold? _” she asks.

“_I don’t think I’ve felt heat in ages. I can’t even remember what it feels like, see? _ ” He lifts his hands, spreading his fingers to show ten frostbitten tips turning black. “_You know, I watched a show at the Dursley’s once from the crack of my cupboard—I could see the sitting room just perfectly from there, you know—and in the show a man got so cold his fingers fell off. Like carrots. _ Snap, snap, snap. _ I fear that’s what will happen to me.” _

_ “Your toes will probably go first,” _ Nagini points out quite reasonably. “_Have you looked at your toes?” _

_ “I think they’re already gone,” _ Harry confides. “_I __haven’t walked in ages, after all. They’ve gotten no circulation at all.” _

Nagini seems to smile, although it’s hard to decipher expressions, as she’s a snake. "_I haven’t walked my entire life and my toes are just fine.” _

_ “You haven’t got any toes,” _Harry says.

_ “Oh, don’t I?” _

_ “I’m so cold,” _ Harry says again, _ “and you aren’t very warm yourself. What I wouldn’t do to have Sirius here. He could change into his Animagus form, curl up around me like a large blanket. I would never be cold, then.” _

_ “I can curl around you, but only if I wanted to squeeze you to death. We do that, you know.” _

Harry contemplates this at length. _ “I wouldn’t mind that so much. Death must be warmer than life. Nothing is colder than this.” _

Nagini hisses out a laugh. _ “You silly boy. You know nothing of heat.” _

She tightens her grip by just an increment then she’s gone, vanished into thin air as if she were never here at all. Harry’s supposes she wasn’t.

———

Voldemort is standing outside the room.

He feels it now stronger than ever—the pull—and he thinks it might crush him if he doesn’t cave to it. It’s a vice grip, caving his chest in by the second. It hurts, physically, and Voldemort has been vastly numb to physical pain for a long time. He can feel it, he’s human enough for that, but it’s muted greatly. This pain isn’t muted in the slightest. 

He’s frightened to see Harry, although he isn’t sure why.

Where once he would have been thrilled at the anticipation of seeing Harry in pain he only feels a deep, rotting dread. He hasn’t fed him any more frequently than he had in the beginning, more to prove a point to himself than anything else, as well as the fact that time has started to blend together and he often can’t recall when he last sent a meal. In the beginning he refused to cave under the pressure that squeezed his chest. Now it wraps around him so constantly that he could hardly cave if he wanted to.

Soulmates are a curse—Voldemort has always known that—but somehow he managed to convince himself that he might be immune. Without love, a soulmate means nothing, and this is not love, but it seems that deep magic knows no limits. Even hatred will kill him if he doesn’t act on this.

Voldemort stands outside the door. It takes a long time—minutes or hours, time has only become less significant with this pain—before he finds the strength to turn the knob over. The door opens with a drawn-out squeal, the hinges complaining at their disuse.

Harry is in the corner with his legs folded up to his chest. He looks… sick. He looks as if he’s dying. At some point he shed his robes and wears only his pants and white button-down, which have both been rolled up as far as he could manage, exposing his limbs. His skin is an ugly grey color and his elbows, ankles and knees stick out further than they should. He looks breakable—breakable in every sense of the word. His eyes are bloodshot and glazed, staggering as he peers up at Voldemort unmindingly.

The first thing Harry asks is, “Are you real?”

Voldemort can hardly breathe, and it isn’t him, he swears it, it’s this curse. The sight of Harry like this churns his stomach, and he hisses at the pain of it, the _ frustration _of it, because he loathes this boy. He wants him dead but cannot kill him, and torture should be the next best option. Pain should be his joy, as it was days or weeks ago when he last visited Harry in this room, but Harry looks different now. He’s shed so much of the already minimal weight he had. His skin is sunken. His eyes are empty. Harry looks like a ghoul.

“Am I… what?” he forces through the vice grip on his throat.

“I asked if you’re real, but I don’t suppose you would answer that honestly, real or not.” He looks up at Voldemort with big doe eyes, although they look like _ pain _ and _ isolation _and a complete absence of hope. “It’s so cold in here,” he says. “I told Nagini, too, but she was no help.”

“Nagini…” Voldemort whispers.

“She wasn’t real, either. Sometimes I remember and sometimes I don’t, but I remember seeing her. She was kind, you know. Much kinder than you.” He lets his head fall back against the wall, his eyes dropping Voldemort’s. “If only you’d set a table on fire again. I might just climb inside of it. That’s how cold I am.”

The room isn’t cold at all.

“Salazar,” Voldemort breathes. “What have I done?”

“If you were kind you might light a fire. Maybe you’d even warm me yourself,” he stops to laugh at the thought. “When you touched me, what, weeks ago? Months? After you tortured me anyway, you felt warm. My whole body felt warm. You’re like a fire yourself. Did you know?”

“Yes,” Voldemort says, dazed. “I remember.”

He remembers _ warm warm warm. _

“Would you touch me? You can _ Crucio _me first if you’d like, although I think it might kill me this time, even if this isn’t real. I’ve died before, you know. Nagini killed me once. Then Ginny, though I can’t really explain that one…” He trails off, not as if he’s pondering but as if he’s forgotten that he was speaking altogether.

Voldemort takes a hesitant step forward and Harry smiles at him. He actually smiles, and although his chapped and peeling lips look on the verge of ripping at the seams it doesn’t look forced. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I’m too tired to bite.”

That’s it. The smile, that’s what finally breaks him. Voldemort is beside him on the floor, hands hovering in the air and unsure what to do. He’s never done this before, but every bone in his body aches.

“Hush,” Harry says softly, and moves himself, sliding closer to Voldemort. “Just don’t curse me, okay? I know you’re kinder here, but… don’t curse me.” Then he leans forward, pressing himself against Voldemort’s chest.

Everything is _ warm warm warm_.

Something inside Voldemort that’s been tightening for weeks is suddenly unraveled. The chains around his body fall. The thing crushing his ribcage and his neck and his head is just… gone. There’s space for only Harry.

He feels as if he’s burning and doesn’t mind at all. He understands when Harry said he would crawl inside the fire.

Harry sighs into his neck and his breath is _ warm warm warm. _ “This is odd,” he muses. “I usually can’t feel in these. You know how in dreams you feel pain, but not really? It’s pain playing pretend—you know it’s there and you can scream and cry with the knowledge of it even if you feel nothing. That’s how it is, even though I’m never dreaming. I think you’ve spelled me awake, Voldemort. I don’t sleep anymore.”

Voldemort’s arms hang limp at his sides. His nose is pressed against the lion’s head but it’s the most he can bring himself to do. He can’t recall the last time he touched someone. He’s horrified and _ warm warm warm _and disgusted by it all but this pleasure, this calmness, is more powerful than anything. This is everything.

Harry is clinging to his chest like a child woken from a nightmare, and Voldemort notices belatedly that he’s crying. The boy… is crying. As if he really is a child. As if this really is a nightmare.

Voldemort raises a hand slowly, stiffly, and brings it to the boy’s head, patting his hair awkwardly. He laughs wetly into Voldemort’s chest, and Voldemort stops, affronted. “It’s okay,” Harry says. “It’s okay. Whatever you want. This is enough.”

“You’re crying,” Voldemort states.

“Yeah,” Harry responds, not making any effort to stop. “It’s just—this is going to end, then I’ll be cold again. I probably won’t even remember this. It’s a miracle that I remember anything here, really; my memory is so inconsistent.” He pauses, his crying quieting slightly. “You’re just so _ warm. _” And that’s all he says.

Voldemort aches. The disgust has dissipated completely now despite all his attempts to hold onto it, but it will return, he’s sure. When he breaks this hold and is able to think for himself again he’ll realize how wrong this is. How _ weak. _ How pathetic. He’ll remember what it’s like to see Harry in pain, the pleasure of it, and things will go back to normal. He’ll stop thinking about that _ cursed _mark.

That’s as far as his thought process goes, intercepted by the mark that washes everything else away.

Voldemort reaches for Harry’s arm which is given over easily, the pitiful thing still pliant against Voldemort’s body. He turns it palm-up so he can look at the mark in reverence. _ The killing curse_. Oh, the irony. It’s all a joke. Fate has played a horrible joke on him.

His fingers are burning in an unpleasant way.

“Touch it,” Harry says, “please. It hurts when you’re looking but not touching.”

Harry doesn’t lift his head. He doesn’t move his arm. He does nothing but lay limply against Voldemort’s chest, but the plea in his voice rings clear. The longer Voldemort looks at it the more he feels it too, the burning, nothing like _ warm warm warm. _ He’s forced into it as much as Harry is. It’s _ painful_.

Ancient, ancient magic caused this. Soul magic is so deeply ingrained in every wizard, Voldemort knows now how foolish he was to have ever thought he might be able to resist it. He doesn’t _ want _ to touch it—he surely doesn’t want to be this insufferable child’s soulmate. He doesn’t want to find out what it will do to him, to Harry, to _ them, _but there’s no other choice given. This is what he’s meant to do. Fate rules him and he resents it. A cruel, cruel trick it plays. Such a sturdy trap.

He raises one finger—just one—and makes contact.

The world ends and the world begins, again and again—that is how the universe has always survived. This is one of the two, the beginning or the ending, but Voldemort couldn’t tell you which, not even if he were lying. How does a person lie when even they can’t discern the truth?

The world ends and the world begins, again and again. Now, the world simply falls away.

———

Harry is falling.

This is real.

Voldemort is screaming in agony, and all Harry can think is that love must hurt terribly after a lifetime of hatred.

———

Harry is watching him calmly. Voldemort is in pain. Blinding, searing, excruciating pain. He’s never felt a pain like this. Never dreamt of a pain like this. What has the mark done to him? What has he done to himself?

This must be death. Nothing else could possibly hurt so badly. 

He feels as if every cell of his body is being torn out and put back again, as if he’s being reconstructed but first the entire building must come down. He’s still screaming, although he thinks he might have run out of breath.

Salazar, the world must be falling down on top of him. It must be tearing him apart. Perhaps every atom of this plane is tearing apart just as completely as Voldemort is—perhaps this is what the end feels like.

Voldemort isn’t accustomed to pain, and this isn’t pain, not really. This is on a spectrum completely separate from pain, for it cannot be compared to anything. There’s no word for this.

The world is ending. The world is ending. Voldemort is ending right along with it.

———

Harry feels no pain. If anything it’s a rush of euphoria. He feels more alive now than he has in so very long. He forgets how weak his body has become, how he’s going mad, how the world has ended. He can feel everything. The entire world feels like an extension of himself and he thinks this must be what love is in its purest form--to look at another thing and love it so deeply that it becomes as much a part of you as you are; to look at something and have your soul move aside to give it space to lie down. 

Voldemort is screaming and Harry doesn’t mind. It must be a lifetime of cruelty come back to tear him to pieces. If he dies now Harry wouldn’t mind much at all, no. Let it be an end to all of this. It isn’t as if he hasn’t wished for it often since coming here. Recently it’s been the only thing he’s wished for at all.

Voldemort screams until he no longer has a voice to scream with, then screams some more. It’s like watching him be hit by the _ Cruciatus, _but this is worse. He truly does wonder if Voldemort is dying. He wonders if his soul is being torn out of his body, if he has one at all. Does Voldemort have a soul? Does Voldemort have anything at all that could give him some semblance of humanity?

Is he truly too far gone?

———

Voldemort has never wished for death.

Not until this moment.

———

When Voldemort begins to thrash Harry moves across the room to watch from a distance. He was sure it was real when Voldemort touched the mark, when he felt it—whatever it was. That feeling couldn’t have been fabricated. But now, watching Voldemort in agony, he muses that it might very well be imagined. He’s never seen the monster in pain, after all. He isn’t sure if he’s even _ capable _of feeling pain. Even so it feels vivid in a way the few blurred memories he’s held onto don’t. The edges of this room seem to bite and nothing else looks any different than it did in the beginning. There are no inconsistencies or sore thumbs, nothing to suggest it isn’t reality.

All the same. Peeled wallpaper. Worn carpet. Oak table. When his eyes fall on the only object in the room he makes his way over, lifting himself up to sit on the surface.

Some of the soot stains Harry’s palms. It’s charred.

———

It’s hours later that Voldemort wakes up to find Harry’s eyes trained steadily on him.

Voldemort wants to hurt him. He wants to watch him suffer for what he did. This is his fault, after all. Harry nearly killed him, so Voldemort will drive him to the brink of death. For all of the pain Voldemort suffered he’ll watch Harry endure it twice as long. He wants it so fiercely that his chest is on fire, physically burning as if there’s a wildfire within his ribcage, malevolent and hungry. He’ll be incinerated if he doesn’t satisfy the craving, he’s sure of it. The more he thinks about it—casting a curse, making Harry scream—the worse it gets.

Unfortunately, Voldemort can’t move. Eventually it will return to him but for now he hardly has the strength to stay sitting upright. All of his strength has been stolen from him and, it seems, eaten up by the one Harry Potter.

“I think you must have rejected it,” Harry says casually. “It probably sensed that you’re heartless.” Voldemort sneers with all of the venom he can find within himself simply because it’s all he has the strength to do. 

“I will recover,” he promises, “and when I do I’ll torture you to the brink of death.”

Harry tilts his head, smiling unpleasantly in a way that makes Voldemort deeply uneasy. “No,” he says sweetly, and Voldemort _ burns_. “No, I don’t think you will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	6. Heal

“_Incarcerous! _”

Harry is standing calmly across the room from Voldemort, leaning against the wall and picking at his grown-out nails. His knuckles stick out much further than they should.

“_Stupefy! Confundo! _”

Harry sighs, tilting his eyes upward slightly to watch Voldemort pacing, absolutely livid, not a single one of his spells firing. He’s panting and hunched over slightly as if fighting off great pain.

“_Impedimenta! Confringo!” _

“Vol-” Harry tries to say before he’s cut off.

“_Expulso!” _ Voldemort pauses, gripping his chest with his jaw clenched, muscles jumping under the thin white skin of his cheek. “_Sectumsempra!” _That one seems to nearly cripple him. He’s bent at the waist, eyes burning furiously. He raises his wand once more.

“_Crucio! _” and Voldemort is on the ground.

He isn’t screaming, not like he did before, but he’s making a sound that’s something close to it. Harry stays standing, watching Voldemort with a small, twisted smile on his face. “I warned you, did I not?”

“What,” Voldemort rasps out, “_is _this?”

“You’re not so thick that I need to explain, are you?” 

Voldemort snarls and immediately hunches further into himself, hissing. “Quit that,” he snaps.

“Quit what?” and Harry can’t help his deliberately innocent tone. He’s enjoying this. Just a bit.

“Making me want to _ hurt _you.”

“Oh,” Harry says sweetly, “that.”

Voldemort stands, rising to his feet far more gracefully than should be allowed, considering his height and the immense pain he’s in. Despite knowing he can do nothing Harry steps back. He’s a menacing form, even harmless as he is.

“You’re mocking.”

“What do you plan to do about that, Voldemort?”

He makes another pained noise, glaring spitefully. _ Honestly, _ Harry thinks. _ It’s just too easy. _

“Here’s what’s happening,” Harry says. “You want to hurt me. Souls don’t take kindly to their mates trying to hurt them. Think of it as… a shock collar. When you misbehave you get hurt. Eventually you learn not to misbehave.”

“I am not a _ mutt_,” Voldemort spits.

Harry hums. “You surely act like one.”

He watches with a small, wicked smile. There’s a slight burning in his chest, probably due to the enjoyment of seeing Voldemort in pain, but he isn’t actively hurting him. It isn’t _ his _ fault Voldemort has the emotional intelligence of a toddler, after all. _ He _isn’t the one with the complete lack of control over his issues; he’s just here for the show.

“I will make you regret this,” Voldemort promises.

“Will you? Are you going to starve me to death, Voldemort? You’re already halfway there, after all.”

“This is just absurd,” he hisses.

“Here’s an idea,” Harry chirps, “learn to control your temper tantrums.”

Voldemort leaves shortly thereafter. Harry stays where he is, watching as he goes and grinning all the while. Oh, how this must complicate things for the Dark Lord.

———

Harry doesn’t like when Voldemort is gone, especially now that he’s become a game more than anything. The soulmark settles something involuntary in Harry’s head. He isn’t always _ there, _but he’s there significantly more often than he is when the room is empty.

Now the room is empty, and he begins to drift.

Harry finds himself in the graveyard of Little Hangleton, looking down on a headstone. The stone is almost worn completely, the letters nearly indecipherable. He crouches down to the balls of his feet, raising one thumb to trace along the name. He freezes.

Cedric Diggory. The name is Cedric Diggory. 

He stands and stumbles back.

Something pushes him to the next headstone. _ Quirinus Quirrell, June 4th 1992. _

He steps to the next headstone, and then the next, all the way down the line. Some are names of people; others are simply bizarre.

_ Myrtle Warrren, June 13th 1943 _

_ The Spider in Mad-Eye Moody’s Classroom, September 4th 1994 _

_ 12 Muggles — died a violent death, November 1st 1981. _(Harry can only assume that’s in reference to the blasting curse Peter Pettigrew unleashed on the street after James and Lily’s death.)

_ Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, October 31st 1492 _

_ Binky the Bunny, October 15th 1993 _

_ Pandora Lovegood, 1990 _

_ Marlene McKinnon and Family, 1981 _

_ Rubeus Hagrid’s Chickens, October 31st 1992 _

_ Edgar Bones and Family, 1981 _

_ Salazar Slytherin’s Basilisk, May 29th 1993 _

_ Gideon and Fabian Prewett, 1981 _

_ Dorcas Meadowes, 1981 _

Down and down and down the line—the row of headstones that he doesn’t seem to be making any progress on. He doesn’t appear to be moving any nearer or farther from one side or the other. He keeps walking and the names keep changing, but he stays right where he began.

He doesn’t once see James and Lily Potter.

But he finds Harry Potter.

_ Harry Potter, October 31st 1981 _

He’s dead, then. His parents are alive and Harry is dead.

When he looks up he’s no longer in the graveyard of Little Hangleton, but in the midst of a cemetery in Godric’s Hollow. Just across the road is a small cottage. There’s smoke rising up from the chimney and windows glowing orange against dusk. Silhouettes of people move behind the gauze curtains.

Some impulse sends him toward the cemetery’s gates, toward the street that holds the home that looks familiar, somehow—not as if he’s seen it before but as if some deeply rooted part of him knows it. It’s a comfortable feeling settling beneath his skin. This place was made for him.

The street is desolate. Harry only realizes it’s been raining when he sees the reflection of streetlights on the paving of the road. He notices belatedly that the grass is damp, the water seeping through his dirty sneakers and freezing his feet. His hair is damp, too. His clothes. Everything is suddenly wetter than it was before, then it’s pouring. Then it’s storming. Then the wind is whipping so fiercely he fears it may tear his clothes from his body. He thinks he should probably get out of this rain. 

He hurries his pace, stepping onto the pavement into a puddle that promptly splashes up to soak the bare skin of his ankles. All of Harry is dripping. He thinks there is nothing in this world he wants more than to be free of this rain.

He crosses the street, approaching the home that first drew his eyes, understandably, as it’s the only one he can see with any sign of life within it. The street looks like a ghost-town, abandoned and dark and unoccupied all but for the tiny home with the glowing windows and smoking chimney and silhouettes dancing behind gauzy curtains, and this is the home he goes to. Both because it seems the safest and because something within him is sure that this is his only choice. If this place is made for him he will go where it leads; if it speaks he will listen.

It’s eerie—the way his footsteps seem to echo up and down the empty road as he crosses, seem to carry miles as he climbs the front steps. His breath sounds like an orchestra accompanying the rain as he stands in front of the door, somehow louder than the wind; louder than the pouring; louder than the storm. His pulse is a drum beat. The entire world seems to center in on the point where his knuckles rap the wood three times.

Harry is suddenly colder than he thinks he’s ever been. Colder than ice, colder now that the rain seems to have turned into hail large enough to bruise him where it hits. The air is turning over and over and Harry thinks the world might be ending. It will end, he’s sure, if he doesn’t step inside this house. Mother Earth herself is bringing hell upon this empty road to push Harry into this home and he can’t guess as to any reason why except that this place was indeed made for him. It was made for him and he will listen.

The door opens to reveal a woman. She’s still young, not older than thirty-five. Her pale skin is adorned with freckles scattered across her nose and cheekbones. Hair as bright as a flame falls over her shoulders—which are just as freckled—burning warm enough to thaw the cold that seems to have suddenly made a home within Harry’s bones. Her eyelashes are long, framing green eyes… 

She has Harry’s eyes.

No, Harry has hers.

It’s all he’s ever been told—that he has his mother’s eyes but a face just like his father. Lily and James Potter’s son, a spitting image, and what a shame they had ever been separated, they’d say, what a shame you had never known them. What a shame you couldn’t have been raised by such brilliant wizards.

Harry stands face-to-face with Lily Potter, who is dead. Except, no, Harry is dead. He saw the headstone in the cemetery just a short while ago. Harry is dead and here is Lily Potter, a striking image backlit by the fire blazing behind her. She’s beautiful, Harry thinks. 

Her face forms a small ‘o’ shape at the sight of Harry there, dripping wet and shaking. “Oh Merlin,” she says, then wastes not even a second before pulling Harry through the doorway and shutting the door behind him. He’s dripping all over the wooden floorboards, tracking dirt in from the grass, and he’s sure he’s being terribly rude but still can’t bring himself to look away from her. His mother. Or who would have been his mother. _ Is, _maybe, but not anymore—not here and not anywhere else.

“Godrick,” she says in alarm, looking Harry up and down, “stay here. I’m going to get you some towels.”

She’s gone, and just a few moments later a small face peers around the corner. Harry watches them, trying his hardest not to seem daunting standing there soaked and dishevelled. Either he succeeds or the child is particularly brave, because in no time at all a young girl steps around the corner. She looks so much like Harry that it’s striking. 

Apparently she isn’t blind to it either. “You’re Harry?”

All of his breath leaves him in one exhale. He nods.

“He said you’d come,” she says softly, and her voice has a tone Harry finds slightly unsettling. “He told me to call him when you do.”

He shakes his head slowly. He doesn’t know who she’s referring to, but no one asking a young girl to keep watch for a dead boy can mean anything good. “I don’t think you should do that.”

“My name is Hadley,” she says as if Harry hadn’t spoken. “I’m your sister, or would have been. You’re dead, you know. Mum and Dad couldn’t save you.”

“Hadley,” Harry says. “Who told you to call them?”

“Voldemort.” She says it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. As if he had never ripped the wizarding world up by its roots and taken hundreds of lives with it.

“Hadley,” Harry says again, slowly this time. “He’ll kill you. He’ll kill all of you.”

She smiles. “He already got what he wanted. He asked Mum and Dad to step aside so he could kill you and they did. He spared them, and he let them have me a few years later. He’s merciful. You’re the only thing that can kill us now, Harry. I give him you or he takes all of us. Do you want that?”

Harry’s head is spinning. They gave him up? His parents just stepped aside to let Voldemort kill him? It’s impossible.

“My family is happy,” Hadley says, her voice suddenly cold in a way that a child’s so young should never be. “He won’t touch us again. That’s why you need to leave.”

Harry stumbles back toward the doorway. “I’ll leave,” he says hurriedly. “I’ll leave you alone, I swear it.”

She laughs like Harry has said something particularly funny. Her laugh sounds like bells. She reaches down to her pyjama shirt and rolls up the left sleeve, revealing the Dark Mark. She’s freckled like Lily, fair and soft like her. It looks grotesque against her pale skin. 

“Hadley!” Harry shouts, stepping forward, but her fingers have already been laid gingerly across the skull on her forearm, the snake beginning to writhe within its mouth. “You’ll kill me,” he pleads. “You’re going to kill me.”

“You’re already dead, Harry.”

Then there’s a crack and smoke and the room has grown dimmer. As the space clears a tall form stands in the center. Lily and James have come running into the room, Lily snatching Hadley around the waist and pulling her small body behind her own. James is beside them and the terror is so clear in each of their eyes that Harry chokes on a sob or a scream or a moan, something, as it tries to escape his throat. _ I did this_, he thinks. _ I am what has made them so afraid. _

Hadley peers around Lily, smiling widely with not even a hint of fear. “Just behind you. He came into the house during the storm.”

Voldemort doesn’t turn. “I want to thank you, Hadley. You’ve been very helpful to me.”

Hadley, of all things, actually _ blushes_. “You’re welcome, my Lord.”

“Even so, I’ll need to apologize,” he continues. “You’ve been helpful, Hadley. I’ll spare you because I am a merciful Lord, but the same cannot be said for your parents. The continuation of this line is simply too dangerous. The price is too great.”

Hadley’s eyes are wide and confused. She opens her mouth—maybe to ask a question—but she isn’t nearly quick enough. Two blinding flashes of green light and James and Lily are dead on the floor beside her. Hadley is screaming, on the ground and backing as far away from their lifeless forms as she can manage without getting any nearer to Voldemort. Harry is looking at them rather numbly. In some other life, in some other plane, he’s sure he’s seen this before. In another life they saved him—this much he knows. He imagines this is what they would have looked like had he been old enough to remember. 

Then Voldemort turns. “You truly are a pesky thing, aren’t you? You can’t seem to stay dead.”

Harry doesn’t say anything. He has no wand, which he might have remembered if he’d been thinking about magic at all. Magic is a thought that has only just occurred to him as a truth, as if it hadn’t existed until the moment Hadley pulled her forearm out of her pyjama sleeve, then it seemed as true to him as breathing.

“I can only hope this is our last meeting, Harry Potter.” There is a pause in which Harry doesn’t move. He would call this cowardly if not for the fact that he refuses to cower. He looks Voldemort in the eyes when he speaks the words because this world was made for him. This was made for him and he will listen. “_Avada Kedavra. _”

Green light. Pain. And Harry is falling.

———

There are three untouched loaves of bread and three untouched glasses of water sitting on the wooden table. They look more appetizing to Harry than anything else he’s laid eyes on in his short life, but he finds himself too weak to reach them. He wills his body to move but his muscles may as well be disconnected from every nerve. He lies still. The room lies still. He hears nothing, not so much as a whisper, and he wonders if this is what dying feels like—a standstill. He thinks dying must simply be lying in a world that’s motionless until you yourself are motionless, and lying there until time itself is motionless and everything ceases to be at all. There are worse ways to die, he supposes. There are more honorable ways, surely, but there is no room for honor here. There is no room for anything but stagnant air and still bodies. For insanity and lifelessness

Voldemort did this to him. Once, Harry swore he would kill him. Once there was nothing in this life Harry craved more, and that Harry would be horrified at this position. He would be enraged, reckless, desperate; but that Harry took a lot of energy to live in, and as of now he has none. He is far too tired for that nonsense.

It’s been so long, hasn’t it? It’s been so damn long.

———

Voldemort should go back. He should, really. The pain alone seems like it would be enough to drive him back to the boy, but he thinks the agony of longing for Harry’s screams eclipses the pain of staying away. He thinks. It’s becoming less clear.

It’s been getting worse—not gradually like before. Now it’s as if he’s kicked the rock that will trigger a landslide and the gravel is becoming less steady by the second. It’s an exponential decline. He thinks he sends up meals and he thinks he gets them back, but the first seems blurry and the second seems wiped altogether. His mark burns constantly in varying degrees. At times it is enough to make him grit his teeth against screams and at times it is nothing more than a low simmering beneath the skin, but in one way or another it’s always present. Harry is an itch he cannot scratch. Voldemort doesn’t have the power to wish pain upon him anymore; he doesn’t have the power to do anything but _ crave_. Salazar, he craves him. He’s hungry. He _ hurts. _

Voldemort should go back, really, but he fears the consequences. He fears that his own anger will bring agony or Harry’s presence will bring bliss. He can’t be sure which is worse.

Voldemort stays there for days—in that purgatory of nondecision. He’s conflicted between his pride and his pain, but he swears that as long as he’s strong enough to bear it he will bear it. Time passes, how much he can’t be sure, but it must be days. He carries on in a sort of haze, distant and unaware.

One night he goes to sleep with a pocket of magma beneath his wrist and the next he wakes up aflame. Voldemort caves then, only because he thinks he may be dying, and if he is to die this will not be the way he does it.

——-

_ What an anticlimactic way to die_, Harry thinks. All that time he’d been expecting to die in a battle, or in a grand gesture of sacrifice, or tragically in the midst of some epic quest. Harry has always assumed his death would come with some level of grandeur, which is certainly narcissistic of him, but not altogether ludicrous. Judging by his track record thus far, statistically, a grand death would have been more likely than a mundane one.

And yet here he is, and what a silly way to die, Harry thinks. How dull. How meaningless. He wishes it were painful. That, at the very least, would make it more interesting. This death feels like nothing more or less than drifting to sleep.

He only vaguely registers it when the door opens. When he cracks his eyelids he sees the Dark Lord crumpled upon the ground just inside the doorway, a heap of black cloth and a whisper of white skin. His breaths are labored. _ Am I killing him? _Harry wonders.

A hand emerges and Harry muses that it looks just like stark-white parchment, fingers spindly as a black widow’s legs and just as thethal. They cradle a wand that holds all of Harry’s attention. He longs for his wand, now, for nothing but the comfort of it. He wants to feel the buzzing of his magic in his hand when he falls asleep.

Then there are jets of light coming from the tip, spell upon spell, none of which Harry expect to land. Voldemort can’t hurt him anymore, and, anyway, what would be the use?

But the spells land, one after the other, not bringing pain as Harry expected, and neither pleasure, but something soothing. He feels his skin warm and begin to hum pleasantly, then something in his chest opens up and he feels as if he’s tasting air for the first time. Breathing has never felt so sweet. Another spell and his head is clear of fog, or the majority of it, leaving nothing but a light mist. A spell, and another, and his muscles are responsive. Harry feels like a man risen from the grave.

By the time Voldemort stands Harry is sure he could too, with some effort if he wished to try, but he’s content on the ground, reacquainting himself with the world of the living. He looks up to see snakes’ eyes burning a fierce red, more fierce than he’s possibly ever seen before—quite a feat, considering Harry has witnessed the man try to kill him on more than one occasion. There’s something different in this fire. Fury, yes, but something else. Maybe fear.

His muscles are tense as if he’s trying to hold himself back. From what, Harry doesn’t know. If he were trying not to harm Harry there would be pain, and there’s no hint of that in his tall form. He doesn’t look as if he’s in physical pain, no; he looks terrified. Terrified and livid, although any and all emotion the man possesses will eventually find itself tunneled into fury. Harry thinks it’s all he knows what to do with it. 

“Thought you’d starve yourself to death, did you?” Harry tries at a response but lets out only a grunt. “You insolent, fatuous, _ child,” _ Voldemort seethes. He begins pacing back and forth, his breathing labored. “You truly thought you could outsmart the Dark Lord by _ skipping meals. _ You foolish boy. You brainless _ idiot_.” Voldemort continues throwing insults but not once does he so much as flinch with pain. He’s either too angry to register it or he doesn’t want to hurt Harry at all. Both seem… unlikely.

Harry has been steadily regaining strength amidst Voldemort’s fit. “If you’re quite done throwing schoolyard insults, I would love to contribute to the conversation.” Voldemort raises a hand in what Harry interprets as a flippant ‘go ahead’ gesture but doesn’t cease his pacing. Harry takes it as permission to speak, not that permission holds much weight. “I wasn’t intentionally starving myself. I couldn’t reach them.”

“What a shame you don’t have legs to carry you,” Voldemort responds acidicly. 

Harry’s chest burns, and he realizes it’s _ him _ wanting to hurt Voldemort. All of his anger rises up suddenly, although his voice comes out even and controlled. “I couldn’t _ move. _ I was _ dying _and you were letting me, you absolute monster. I couldn’t have eaten if I wanted to.”

Voldemort stops walking, turning to look at Harry, chillingly calm. Meanwhile, Harry feels like he might burst into flames. He manages to push himself up into a sitting position. “This food has been here for days. Even as undisciplined as your mind is, you surely haven’t been incapacitated so long. I would have been here some time ago having to spell you back to life.” His face wrinkles in something resembling disgust at that, as if the very thought of working to keep Harry alive is revolting.

“All of the food came at the same time,” Harry says slowly. Surely Voldemort doesn’t think him stupid.

The snake narrows his eyes before striding towards the table, cloak brushing the ground behind him like a morbid wedding gown. Harry almost laughs at the bizarre thought. Voldemort looks at him sharply, picking up the small hunk of bread nearest him and tearing it in half, the bread still soft in the middle. Harry almost bolts forward at the sight of it. His mouth would be watering if there were anything there to salivate. 

He drops the bread unceremoniously onto the plate and reaches for the piece furthest from him. He keeps his gaze on Harry and simply taps it against the table three times. It makes a dull noise against the wood, unmistakable in its tone. The bread is hard as rock.

———

Voldemort sees the moment the boy begins to shake.

“That’s impossible,” Harry breathes. “They’ve only just gotten here. This is the first I’ve seen them.”

Voldemort’s head begins to spin. “Are you lying to me.” His question comes out with no inflection of an inquiry, the tone menacing enough to make the boy flinch.

“I’m not,” he responds, somehow managing to sound fierce even through the fear reflected quite clearly in his eyes. The boy is afraid, and not of the monster standing in front of him; he’s afraid of losing himself.

“I don’t understand,” Voldemort murmurs, eyes locking on Harry like he’s a particularly hard puzzle to solve. “I feel the effects, but they’re nowhere near this. They’ve been manageable. I haven’t gone _ mad _ from it.”

It comes out of nowhere. One moment Harry is fierce and afraid and the next he looks suddenly … unhinged. Unstable. Like he’s shaky within the frame of himself. 

“I haven’t seen another human in weeks, or months, however long I've been in this bloody room with no one to tell me what’s real or isn’t.” His voice is trembling, though with what Voldemort can’t quite tell. One part fury, two parts fear, then some unknown factor in the midst of it. He looks on the verge of cracking down the middle. “I’m starving and have been since even before I stopped eating altogether, and I can’t recall when that happened. I haven’t slept in weeks. You don’t think that would drive a person mad? You don’t think that would pick up my expiration date and push it forward a few months?”

Voldemort massages his temples, somewhat irritated at Harry’s melodrama. “What do you mean you haven’t slept, Harry.”

“I haven’t slept,” he says simply, his tone falling flat quite suddenly as if they were having a casual conversation. Voldemort looks up to see him leaning backward to rest against the wall, eyes gone vacant. “I try, and if I try too hard I end up somewhere else. I never get tired, you know.” His voice is growing rapidly distant again, that same tone he had when he told Voldemort about Nagini. When he talked about Ginny Weasley murdering him. It’s a notable cadence, as if Harry is in a dimension twice removed from their own. 

“Harry,” Voldemort says, more forcefully than is necessary, probably. “What are you doing?”

“What am I…?” He hums. “I’m just sitting here, Mrs. Weasley.” Voldemort stops, disgusted by the choice of character suddenly assigned to him. “Why are you here? What happened to the trolley witch?”

There’s a long pause then in which Voldemort stands stricken and Harry nods thoughtfully, eyes focused somewhere just past Voldemort’s right shoulder. 

“That’s a shame,” he murmurs. “Will you get me something sweet, Mrs. Weasley? Everything tastes bitter, lately, like blood and stale bread. A pumpkin pastie, perhaps? Cauldron cakes can count, as well.” He stops and starts laughing, presumably over his alliteration. “Forgive me, Mrs. Weasley. I don’t mean to laugh at your baking.”

A pause. “I’m not sure. I haven’t been able to find anyone. I think I may be the only one on the train today, which seems very odd, but I need to be here, I just know it.”

A pause. “What, Mrs. Weasley?” and he sounds alarmed.

A pause. “_What’s _coming? What are you going on about?”

A pause, then panicked refusal. “No, Dumbledore got rid of them after third year, you know that. They shouldn’t be here. He promised me.”

A pause. “No…” A pause. “Don’t leave, Mrs. Weasley, _ please. _” A pause, then his entire body is frozen, hardly breathing. A pause, then he’s screaming. 

Voldemort knows what he must be seeing now. Dementors. Their scabbed, rotting hands; their empty eye sockets; the gaping chasms where their mouths should be; the darkness they bring with them. His screams become strangled and Voldemort can almost see it—the kiss. Harry’s soul is being sucked out of his body. His breathing is as hoarse as if he were suffocating, chin tilted upward and eyes staring dazedly at the ceiling, the agony so clear in them.

Voldemort just stands.

Harry’s screams cut off as abruptly as they started. He doesn’t seem to come back, not quite. He does nothing but pull his legs up to his chest to wrap his skinny arms tightly around them. He’s curled into himself as tightly as he can possibly manage, shaking violently.

“Cold,” he whispers, and that’s all.

Voldemort stares for a few moments longer then picks up the hunk of bread—the soft one, the one he tore in two—and tosses both pieces at Harry’s feet. The lion doesn’t even look up.

Voldemort turns and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	7. Insanity

It was innocent. As innocent as torture goes, anyway.

It wasn’t that Voldemort _ meant _ to curse Harry into eternal consciousness, not in the long-term. It was meant to be for the day, even just a few hours. It was meant to serve its purpose and be lifted, but due to some error it didn’t fade on its own. Then the entire debacle somehow… slipped Voldemort’s mind. 

He didn’t mean to torture Harry into insanity. He truly didn’t. He can admit he likely wouldn’t have minded much at the time, but it certainly wasn’t his _ intention _. The first time he saw Harry tied to the leg of the table all he could focus on was the pain he was sure to inflict—the pain he’d been waiting so long for and how to savor it to the furthest extent. So he cursed Harry, only to ensure that he wouldn’t pass out from the pain of it while Voldemort had his fun with him. Just a few hours of torture in which Harry couldn’t slip away, and then the curse was sure to lift.

Except it didn’t, and carelessly, foolishly, Voldemort didn’t realize. Of course the price to pay was Harry’s mind.

Maybe Harry could recover with time, but the curse is risky on its own, let alone left applied for weeks. To break it now could have disastrous consequences. The best outcome Voldemort can hope for is a long, long sleep—enough sleep to make up for the weeks that it’s been withheld from Harry. The worst case scenario is unthinkable—that Harry might pass the state of unconsciousness entirely.

Voldemort wouldn’t much mind Harry in an eternal sleep. To have him safely locked away and no longer a nuisance to be worried about or dwelled upon would be quite convenient, truthfully. The worst case scenario, though, is something that Voldemort isn’t willing to risk. The possibility that he might cast the counter-curse only for the chronic fatigue to pull Harry under entirely—that it may just kill him—is unacceptable. Voldemort doesn’t tolerate risk well, especially a risk as weighted as this.

Harry’s sanity is unravelling. He’s losing himself, undoubtedly, and Voldemort has begun to witness it. Is sanity a worthy price for his life? Could Voldemort truly allow Harry’s mind to decompose with the knowledge that this unravelling is the thing that will keep him tied to life?

And the larger question, the most pivotal: will this eventually kill Harry, too?

———

Harry is lost, lost, lost.

He wanders. All he does is wander, lately. Doorways and doorways and doorways. They open to places they surely shouldn’t open to—the meadow outside of the Burrow that the Weasleys play quidditch in; the Forbidden Forest; the Chamber of Secrets. They open and open and open; Harry never runs out of doorways. This is why he’s lost, you know. He knows he should be going somewhere, but doorways lead to doorways lead to doorways, and he’s seen these places before. He’s supposed to be headed somewhere new, anywhere, but he can’t find his way out of this damn labyrinth. His entire life is a labyrinth, isn’t it? All he’s ever done is go the direction people point him to or get lost. Dammit, Harry is lost. Harry is wandering.

He’s not sure of many things, but he’s sure of this: Voldemort comes for him, and Voldemort is real. He’s real and he knows where Harry is supposed to be going.

———

Sometimes Harry thinks Voldemort is real and sometimes he doesn’t, but Voldemort knows this: the longer he stays, the more real he becomes for him.

The mark sobers him. Something about Voldemort in close proximity brings Harry back to the world, at least slightly. At least for a few moments. It seems that ‘slightly’ is the most Harry ever gets.

Harry doesn’t remember hallucinating in front of Voldemort that first time. Voldemort doesn’t tell him.

“I’m telling you,” Harry whispers conspiratorially, as if he’s sharing a great secret. As if someone might be listening. “I don’t sleep anymore. When I come back I’m standing here or there, or sitting on the table, almost never lying down. Only horses sleep standing up. Horses and goblins, probably.”

“I’ve told you, Harry. You sleep-walk.” Voldemort says it over and over as if speaking to a child, trying to get the concept to sink into his impressionable mind—impressionable and easily distracted. 

“I don’t _ sleep_!” and suddenly Harry is half-shouting. He gets worked up like a toddler, sometimes. “You did this to me! Admit that you did this to me, coward!”

Voldemort bristles. Oh, how he would love to make this child writhe. “I am not a coward; you are simply deranged. You’re not thinking clearly, Harry. You’ve gone insane.”

“If I’m insane, it’s your doing,” and he’s back to speaking in his hushed way. “I’m telling you, I don’t sleep anymore. I’m so tired.” 

There’s that tone, wistful and distant; it’s the first sign he’s slipping away. He gets that tone, then his eyes glaze over, then he’s gone. There’s only so much Voldemort can do to keep him here.

———

“Ginny is quite pretty,” Harry says to Hermione, “but I think I might hate her.”

“Hate her?” Hermione asks, alarmed. “Why would you hate her?”

“She’s too soft,” Harry says, wrinkling his nose, “and I reckon she thinks I ought to like that.”

“Well, don’t you?”

“Not quite.”

The floor opens up and the Yule Ball falls away, or Harry does, something. Harry is between a rock and a large brick of cement, seemingly something mechanical. Suspended far above him is a set of train tracks, then the Hogwarts Express comes rumbling down them, approaching the bridge. Except the bridge isn’t intact—it’s lowered. There’s nothing but an open drop into the canyon hundreds of feet below them. 

He can see distantly the people peering out from the windows. It’s his year, the sixth years, now, although Luna is there too. He thinks they might be screaming. Why are they screaming?

Oh. The bridge.

They’re about to fall.

There’s a lever beside him. It must raise the bridge to let them cross. It’s too simple, surely, and Harry sees the catch. The mechanics that move the bridge work by weight. Harry is under it. He’ll be crushed.

He can hear them mocking him. _ Too soft, you said? How’s this for soft. _

How silly. How juvenile.

He thinks he can hear their screams now, so clearly, and he wonders if someone cast a _ sonorous _ just to be sure he would hear them die, if he let them die, which of course he won’t. Who do they think Harry is, anyway? All he ever does is save. All he ever does is crush himself between the rock and the hard place.

He pulls the lever. 

The Hogwarts Express sails by, going serenely on its way. No one hears the crunch. 

———

Sometimes, he begs. Salazar, does he beg, and gods does it pain Voldemort so. He’s reminded often that death would make the pitiful thing shut up. As would a permanent sleep, but Voldemort is avoiding that scenario for as long as it can manage to be avoided.

This mark is a finicky thing. For one, it hardly allows Voldemort to leave Harry’s side. He’s forced into the room far too often, and not only is he unable to hex the boy—even just a bit—when he gets too irritating, but it wants him to cave to the things will. The boy begs and it tells Voldemort to _ listen_, as if he isn’t a Dark Lord. As if he’s truly so low as to stoop to the wishes of others, particularly the wishes of _ The Boy Who Lived. _

Voldemort would kill him now if he could, damned be the consequences. The mark doesn’t like that, either. 

Voldemort spends most of his time in the abysmal room with the pathetic boy who won’t stop talking to the walls. It was a bit entertaining at first but now has become nothing more than pitiful. It’s dull. Voldemort is _ bored. _

Yet, he cannot leave. He so rarely does.

———

“You kissed Cho? Afterward? Really?” Cedric is sitting beside Harry, leaned up against a headstone. 

“Well, yeah, but I expect she only did it because she thought I’d taste like you.”

“Did you?”

“Dunno. Couldn’t tell through all the tears.” He glances at Cedric, grinning a bit, and he’s surprised when Cedric laughs. 

“Can’t blame her,” he shrugs. “Nasty way to lose a boyfriend I reckon.”

“Not that you’d know.”

He snorts. “Right. Not that I’d know. Don’t you fancy Ginny Weasley?”

Harry shrugs. “Maybe. I feel like I should, even if Ron’d slaughter me.”

“Well, snatch a girl one way or another. Gods know I won’t be getting too many opportunities.”

Harry turns his head toward Cedric so his ear lies against the headstone. “What’s it like? Where you are?”

He shrugs. “Cold. White. I reckon I should be headed somewhere but I can’t find anything else.”

“Lonely?”

He nods, once. “Always lonely.”

Harry bumps his shoulder once with his own. “I’m lonely too, you know. All I have is a bloody Dark Lord for company.”

Cedric barks out a laugh that takes Harry by surprise. “Rotten luck.”

“More than bad luck—bad fate. Bad life, really. Wouldn’t have gone any other way.”

Cedric turns his head too, his face hovering inches in front of Harry. “I’d keep you company if you wanted, you know that? I wouldn’t mind.”

The cemetery is melting away, and they’re in the place Cedric spoke of. White. Cold. Cedric cocks his head, looking at the train tracks in front of them. “Never seen those before,” he murmurs.

Harry reaches between them to squeeze Cedric’s hand. “I’ll be okay. Don’t wait up.” He turns his face away, shutting his eyes, letting the dark take place of the light. “You’ve got a train to catch.”

———

“Please, Merlin, gods, _please_ _touch it.” _Harry’s voice is agonized. 

“Stop talking,” Voldemort hisses. This begging, it makes him itch.

“Just for a second. Not even a second, just brush it, anything, _ fuck.” _

Harry is in pain; it’s so clear that he’s in pain. Voldemort wants him to slip again. He wants him to go away, if only to get rid of this awful burning.

“I can’t, Harry, you blubbering child. You’re well aware of this.”

“It won’t,” he stops to gasp for air, “it won’t hurt you, I promise. I _ promise_, please _ make it stop!” _

Harry begins screaming then stops moments later as abruptly as he began. “You don’t understand. It wants you. It needs you so badly.”

Voldemort shudders. “It’s a curse. It’s manipulating you, _ both _of us, for that matter.”

Harry is crying. His words come out a whimper. “I just want you to make it stop.”

Voldemort shuts his eyes, unable to look at the heap of bones and skin and pain in the shape of a boy, not any more, not right now.

“It will kill me,” Voldemort states, and his tone has a finality to it that even Harry is wary to argue against.

“_This _ will kill _ me_,” the little lion responds, but he’s not begging anymore. He’s not asking any questions. He’s stating fact. “I think it might be a mercy.”

_ For both of us, _Voldemort thinks.

———

Harry isn’t improving, exactly, but he’s changing.

The food is helping, he thinks. Now that Voldemort is with Harry so often it’s been harder to slip his mind, and so sustenance comes much more often. Voldemort is there to snap at Harry when he’s forgetting to eat it or forgetting it’s there at all. The strength it provides doesn’t make the dreams go away, exactly, but they’re easier to be aware of. It’s easier not to lose himself to them so often.

They are dreams, he’s realized; dreams or nightmares. Voldemort says he sleepwalks, and Harry doesn’t suppose he has any choice but to believe him. He’s too tired to fight him lately. It seems like all of his waking is a constant struggle against his sleeping. It’s becoming less of a fight as he begins to wonder what all the fuss of fighting is worth, anyway; what is there in reality that he’s so desperate to grasp onto, anyway?

He isn’t getting better, and he doesn’t think he will. He remembers Alice and Frank Longbottom, tortured to insanity. This isn’t too different. If he isn’t improving by now, with food and clearly _ far _too much rest, he doubts he will. It’s a waiting game.

Voldemort won’t touch him or the mark. He wonders if that’s the cure to it all, but wondering is all it is and will ever be, because Voldemort is afraid. He would never say it out loud, but Harry knows fear. Voldemort is scared of the mark and what it will do to him. He is scared of love and what it will do to him.

Not that Voldemort loves Harry, of course, not that he loves anything, but that’s what the mark is, isn’t it? The mark is the pure, undistilled essence of love itself, and it’s no wonder it nearly killed Voldemort at its last contact. It must be so foreign a concept to him, so _ revolting _to him, that his mind refused to accept it. His body rejected the touch, and the touch punished him for the very nerve of it.

Voldemort is afraid of love, and Harry doesn’t blame him. Love is, after all, what did this to him. Insanity by love. Insanity by soulmate.

Maybe Voldemort is too far for love, now, but Harry wonders. If he had known, somehow, the night he walked the streets of Godric’s Hollow, could he have been saved? Could love have saved him? Before his death, the last time, was he not too far past redemption?

The only thing Voldemort has ever feared is death, Harry knows, but to be afraid of love? 

Here is the question, the most pivotal of any: is Voldemort scared simply with the knowledge that love will eventually be the thing to kill him? Or is Voldemort afraid of love because it is the one thing that has the power to save him?

———

“Are you losing your mind?”

Harry laughs quietly, dryly. “Haven’t been able to find it for a while now, actually.”

Harry is surprisingly calm, considering that he seems all here. Ordinarily his lucid moments are reserved for panic or rage, but today he seems content to do neither. Perhaps he’s just tired. Harry does look tired.

“It’s getting worse?”

“Surely. It won’t be long before I go Longbottom on you, at this rate.” He winces at his own statement. “Sorry, that was awful.”

As if Voldemort is the person to apologize to for his morally questionable humor.

“Can insanity kill?”

Harry looks at Voldemort with a flat expression. He would almost think the boy was slipping away if not for the calculating look behind it. It’s much too sharp for him to be drifting. “No way to know for sure, I suppose, but I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s certainly no way I’ll last like this forever.”

His gaze stays on Voldemort for a few more weighted moments before he breaks it, letting his head fall back against the wall and shutting his eyes. “Gods, I’m tired. Sleeping or hallucinating, it’s all the same. Never feel like I’ve gotten a blink of rest.”

Something within Voldemort pinches at how easily Harry has accepted his word as truth. He doesn’t want Harry’s trust; he wants him _ gone_. Except he doesn’t, both because he needs him for the sake of survival and because he _ wants _ him, and he can’t quite recall when those became two distinctly separate entities. _ Need _ and _ want. _

He needs Harry alive, that much he knows, but _want _is an entirely different matter. He wants Harry… to be Harry. He wants Harry sane. He wants Harry to be all here all of the time, and that has nothing to do with Voldemort’s own survival. He isn’t sure what it has to do with, really, only that the ache of it nearly takes him apart. Perhaps it is need, then. Perhaps it’s a ‘need’ when a ‘want’ feels as if it will cripple you if you don’t cave to it. Perhaps ‘need’ is simply ‘want’ made fatal.

All of Harry is fatal to Voldemort, both literally and figuratively. All of Voldemort hangs in the balance of him, somewhere between need and want, somewhere between survival and life. 

He can’t recall when those became separate entities, either.

“Harry,” he says, “I cannot allow you die.”

Harry scoffs. “Yes, well, it seems that’s out of both our hands now. You can take responsibility for it as soon as you please, by the way. This is your doing.”

The boy is right, of course, and Voldemort tells him so, because what’s the use of denying it?

“Swell, then. You’ve confessed your sins and I’ll die sooner or later. That’s all of my strings tied up nicely, aside from the killing you one, but that’s been knotted hopelessly for years.”

“You dying _ will _kill me.”

“Theoretically,” Harry says, and he still hasn’t bothered opening his eyes.

_ You will kill me, foolish boy, _ is what Voldemort wishes to say. _ You think me immune to this? You think me immune to you? You think the power this mark holds is beneath me? _

He wants to say, _ Harry Potter, I am dying. You are dying and I’m coming with you, so open up your damned eyes. _

_ Wake up. _

_ Stay. _

———

Voldemort is trying to come up with a fail-safe.

There are only two ways Voldemort can name to make a wizard immortal: the Elixir of Life, and creating a Horcrux. The Elixir of Life no longer exists, and a Horcrux will rip what’s left of Harry to shreds, and that’s assuming he would have the time or opportunity to force Harry into a murder and the ritual that would be needed to split his soul in the first place.

He wouldn’t survive it.

There’s nothing Voldemort can do to ensure Harry’s life if he removes the curse. There’s no guarantee of anything, aside from the guarantee that Harry will fall asleep.

The most he can hope for is this mark, for it to do its job. Voldemort knows Harry is more stable when he’s close; it has that power over him. The only thing Voldemort can possibly ask for now is that the mark be enough to keep Harry alive.  
Voldemort might have killed Harry Potter, finally.

Funny. It doesn’t feel like a victory at all.

———

Tom Riddle is in the orphanage.

A spider hangs suspended from the top of the bunk, just above Tom’s chest. He keeps his gaze on it, screwing up his brow until the thing goes limp, still hanging by its thread. Tom swipes a finger through it, flicking the dead spider off his chest when it falls. He’s getting better at that. He might try his hand on Billy Stubb’s rabbit, next. Tom has been irritated by the droppings left all over the orphanage.

He wonders if he tried hard enough whether it might work on a human. Not that Tom would _ use _it of course. He’s not a murderer. It’s only curiosity.

He’s been more and more curious lately. He’s tried other things—setting scraps of paper on fire, spinning a top without touching it, yanking Amy Benson’s hair when she begins to talk too much. He likes the tingling in his fingertips and behind his temples; the feeling in his head like he’s soaring. The power rush is somewhat addictive.

He glances at the spider lying on the floor, wondering.

He sits up abruptly, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and fixing his gaze on it. The thing is dead, without a doubt, lying on its back with all eight legs immobilized in the air above it. Tom did that, he thinks, and smiles the slightest bit.

He keeps his gaze on it, then _ pushes_. When nothing happens he pushes harder, focusing on sending this thing inside of him forward, reaching out with it.

The spider twitches.

_ Yes, _ Tom thinks. _ Just a bit more. _ Another surge, this one stronger than the last and filled with a renewed vigor, and—

The spider turns over, takes a few quaking steps on stiff legs, then scuttles off beneath the bed.

Tom stands up, eyes wide, and laughs out loud. He brought the spider back to life. He’s practically a _ god _ , or maybe not even that—maybe Tom _ is _a god. Maybe he’s a god sent to earth with powers mortals can’t even dream of, perhaps this is why he has no parents and no home. 

Tom laughs and laughs. This is it.

Sixteen year-old Tom is standing in the Riddle house. In the center of the drawing room lays Thomas, Mary, and Tom Riddle Senior, all lifeless. Tom turns to leave and gets as far as the front door before he turns back, coming to stand exactly where he had before. He takes a deep breath and lets out a resigned sigh before lifting his wand, training it on the woman who should have been his grandmother. He doesn’t utter a spell; he simply using the wand to center and channel the magic as he _ pushes _. He wastes no time being gentle. A twitch of her hand. A twitch of her eyes. Then the elderly woman is taking in desperate gasps of air, heaving oxygen in and out, face filling with color where minutes ago it had been the starch white of death.

Tom watches in a detached fascination. He’s never done it on a human before, and they’re much more animated than spiders or rodents.

She seems unable to move for the time being so Tom swivels, pushing regenerative magic at both his grandfather and father next, waiting for them to pull themselves back into the world of the living.

Tom feels… nothing.

He supposes that’s enough.

With a sweep of his hand he wipes any memory of the last two hours from the two parents and their son. He leaves when he cannot bear to look at them any longer, and only then.

Voldemort stands in the graveyard of Little Hangleton, watching as Harry grabs the Diggory boy by the hand, _ accios _the Cup toward himself… 

He flicks his wand at his side with the Cup only inches from Harry’s fingers. Pale eyes snap open in the split second before both Harry and the now-living boy disappear. 

The world becomes flashes. Murder after murder in which Voldemort brings the life back into glossy eyes. He _ is _ a god. He was created to take life and to give it back. Lord Voldemort is here to cleanse, to baptize, to _ restart_.

Finally, the home of Lily and James Potter.

They offer themselves and Harry to him, as they should. To deny baptism is to choose death. You cross to the other side and come back or you cross to the other side and stay there; no one is allowed to live on.

Lily and James Potter go first, falling to the ground like ragdolls and staying there. When Voldemort turns to the child he smiles, because baptizing children is the purest experience of all. The toddler isn’t crying or screaming—instead he meets Voldemort’s gaze with a keen fascination. The boy must know what’s coming. He must know that he is being given a gift. Voldemort fixes his eyes on the tyke. He will bring them all back after he’s taken care of the young Harry Potter.

When he casts the curse Voldemort falls. 

Lily and James Potter are never baptized. Harry Potter lives on.

———

Harry is sure of two things:

One, Voldemort just slipped. He drifted.

Two, that was not a dream.

Voldemort blinks back into himself, standing a few feet in front of Harry, eyes coming back into focus. The disorientation only lasts for a second before it’s replaced with fear—a deep, primal fear.

Harry hasn’t been dreaming.

When Harry stands to face Voldemort the fear in his eyes shifts into something more complex, something much harder to interpret. There is still fear—but there’s more. 

“Did you just hallucinate?” Harry asks slowly.

“It appears so.”

Harry’s eyes narrow. “Have I been hallucinating?” This gives Voldemort some pause, which is all Harry needs. His voice raises. “You’re telling me that you _did _this, and have done nothing to fix it, and more than that—have been _lying _to me as I’ve lost my sanity? You’ve been sitting idly by and watching me lose my mind?”

“I-” Voldemort seems to cast around for some excuse, then continues resignedly. “Yes. I have.” Harry’s chest heats so severely he should be doubling over, but he can hardly feel it, really. He’s going to kill him. He’s going to murder Voldemort standing right here, without a wand, all fates be damned to hell. “I can fix it,” Voldemort says weakly, “I can.”

“Oh, can you?” Harry hisses. “I’m sure you’re _ so inclined _ now that you’ve begun to slip with me. Don’t pretend for a moment that this is about _ anything _aside from your disgusting self-preservation.”

Harry can hear his voice inching towards hysterical. He raises his hands, burying them in his nest of filthy hair, turning to face away from Voldemort and focus on breathing. Gods, he needs to breathe. He needs to think through this.

He counts to fifty and back down. Voldemort doesn’t speak; doesn’t so much as shift his weight. 

Harry speaks again, dreadfully calm. “Fix it. You will fix this right now, or I promise you will have so much more to worry about than our slipping sanity.”

“You can’t harm me,” Voldemort says, although it sounds uneasy, as if he’s doubting it himself. 

“I have killed you against all odds once,” Harry says, “don’t doubt for a second that I won’t find a way to do it again.”

“There’s a reason I haven’t done it. This wasn’t just to torture you. You need to know the risks.”

Harry turns around feeling more murderous than Voldemort has ever been blessed to witness. The monster’s eyes actually widen as if shocked. “Fix it. You fix this _ right now _ or I swear to Merlin himself-” And then Harry is doubled nearly completely over, gritting his teeth. Pure spite only lasts so long, it seems.

“I will,” Voldemort says while Harry is gathering the strength to straighten back up.

“_Immediately. _”

“I _ will, _” Voldemort hisses, finally losing his patience, “eventually, but you have to listen first. This could kill you.”

“I could kill _ you, _ you bloody prick, and I _ will _ if you don’t shut up and start solving this.” Salazar, this boy is so bull-headed. There’s no talking him down.

“Harry—”

“You incompetent, murderous, Dark Lord of _ absolute idiocy_, you’ve had plenty of time to talk. Pull your bloody wand and fix this _ now, _ I can’t stand to listen to your aggravating voice for one more bloody second, you _ revolting, monstrous piece of—” _

He crumples as Voldemort flicks his hand once, then once more to cast a cushioning charm just before Harry’s head meets the ground.

For such a fatal curse, Voldemort muses, it certainly isn’t that difficult to reverse.

———

Harry’s eyes fall closed for the first time in a long, long time. 

As he hovers between consciousness and unconsciousness his thoughts are torn between _ if _ or _ when. _ He ponders over which question is ultimately more realistic— _ when _ he’ll wake up, or _ if _ he’ll wake up_. _

The precious moments he has before he’s pulled under are wasted swiftly. He isn’t granted enough time to settle on an answer.

———

Harry is breathing. For now, at least, his chest is rising and falling, no slower than it would if he were lying in bed on an ordinary night. Voldemort can’t bring his eyes away from Harry’s stomach, counting his breaths, scared to even blink should they halt the moment he breaks eye contact. 

Voldemort didn’t plan on staying past the point of stability. He didn’t plan on watching the boy lying unconscious on the carpeted floor, terrified for his breaths to cease. He expected worry, of course—it’s only natural he would worry that his lifeline might be taken by a curse that Voldemort himself cast; what he didn’t plan for was fear. He didn’t plan for the gut wrenching terror that hasn’t allowed him to move any further than the point at which Harry would leave his line of sight. He didn’t plan for this.

The floor is very uncomfortable, really, and the room abysmally decorated. 

This is why, he tells himself, he levitates Harry with a short flick of his hand and lets his hovering body follow Voldemort down the hall. This is why he eases the boy onto a mattress in a furnished bedroom. He’s only brought him here for the sake of the cushioned chair sitting in the corner facing the four poster. Voldemort can’t be expected to sit on the floor, after all. He can’t be expected to lie on a dirty carpet like the little lion has been for so long. Voldemort is above that.

He didn’t plan to take Harry anywhere, let alone to a room much more lavish than the brat should ever deserve. He didn’t plan to keep him _ comfortable_. He was content with the nuisance leaving a dust angel in his wake.

He didn’t plan for any of it. Not the fear. Not the attachment.

He certainly didn’t plan to feel so, so guilty.

It’s the curse, he reminds himself. This bloody mark, his awful mistake in caving to instinct and touching it. 

_ It’s nothing more than instinct and soul magic, _ he thinks, and the reminder feels like a line from a script that he’s repeated in his head countless times. _ It has nothing to do with Harry, _ he thinks, and he feels as if he’s reciting a monologue in front of an empty stadium. _ It _ certainly _ has nothing at all to do with myself, _ he thinks, and he realizes he’s preaching to an audience of only one, and even he is turned away, gazing upon a frail boy in a four-poster bed.

Voldemort just doesn’t know why it takes so much effort to make himself believe it.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	8. Fracture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can't begin to comprehend how desperately this chapter didn't want to be written.  
enjoy (:

Harry is sleeping. 

Voldemort repeats this to himself like a mantra.

He is in the sparsely decorated office downstairs. He is at Malfoy manor with Bellatrix and Lucius, letting them kneel at his feet as they tell him of the open warfare declared by Cornelius Fudge. He is standing in the kitchen eating and he is thinking, _ Harry is sleeping. Harry Potter is asleep. The Boy Who Lived is going on living. _

Still, he finds himself in that bedroom. Still he finds himself sitting upon the high-backed chair in the corner, gazing upon the boy, counting his breaths and watching for any other movement. He looks almost like a corpse—his eyes never shift beneath their lids; his fingers don’t twitch; his limbs don’t move; his body doesn’t shift. It’s this immobility that makes Voldemort wary.

It must be a week now that Harry has laid there, every muscle frozen where it was placed aside from his chest; up and down. Rhythmically. Voldemort pulls to mind every restorative spell he’s ever been taught. He casts nourishment and hydration charms and a spell that prevents bed sores. He uses magic to check Harry’s pulse every so often. He brushes his magic against Harry’s very rarely simply to see if it’s growing weaker.

He was wary of it the first time the thought occurred to him, but it became clear quickly that there is no animosity between Harry’s magic and his own. It’s quite the opposite, in fact; Harry’s magic feels almost like a counterpart to Voldemort’s. It feels like touching a brother, something similar and yet distinctly different. While Voldemort’s magic is a dark, writhing thing Harry’s is light. Rather than writhe is seems to shift languidly, as if dancing. Harry’s magic is fierce enough to turn worlds and soft enough to lull a lesser man to sleep. Harry Potter is a contradiction.

Voldemort found that after the first touch he simply hasn’t wished to stop doing it. Perhaps he should be concerned, but the only concern he can muster is for whether or not the Chosen One is on his way to death, and this question is all-consuming. Voldemort can hardly stand to leave the room.

From what he can tell their bond is keeping Harry stable, although this conclusion is almost entirely drawn from how unstable Voldemort himself feels when he’s separated from the sleeping boy. Something about him settles deeply within Voldemort’s skin, his bones. With a literal war raging outside the confines of the room Voldemort steps in and there’s… nothing. Voldemort feels nothing but an eerie catharsis. That and fear, although even the fear is muted in this space. He’s only truly afraid when he’s elsewhere, when he cannot lay eyes on the boy and check his breaths and be sure he isn’t slipping.

Any doubts Voldemort ever had that their lives are irreversibly intertwined have been washed away completely now. Harry’s life is his life and his Harry’s. Whether or not the horcruxes can change that fate he isn’t sure, but it doesn’t matter much now. The fact of it is Harry is not immortal, and Voldemort fears the consequences should he live and Harry die.

So Voldemort sits upon the chair in the corner. He brushes against Harry’s magic—the light of it, the air of it, the soft brush of it against his own. He feels Harry’s magic and he waits.

———

His followers are waiting for him, he knows this.

He was present after the battle at the Department of Mysteries for a time, and all was carrying on well with his guidance. The dementors were released from Askaban, along with the few followers who were still imprisoned within its walls. A fair few giants were persuaded to the dark side of the war and managed to severely damage an area in West Country—which was blamed, of course, on a hurricane by the muggles. Their willingness to turn a blind eye to magic at any cost is both impressive and disgusting.

Since the day the mark damaged him Voldemort has been more absent, both because he was weakened by it and because getting space from Harry was near impossible. He presented himself when he could so as to keep his followers in check—to remind them of their place beneath him. Even so Lucius and Bellatrix took the place of leadership admirably well without instruction, organizing attacks when they could, attempting to weaken the Ministry. Carrying on their Lord’s original plans.

Without him, even with their efforts, the war has become sporadic. They’ve succeeded in the death of Amelia Bones and Emmeline Vance and come out relatively unscathed from any skirmishes they’ve engaged in, but… 

His side is weakening. There’s no doubt of it, and suddenly Voldemort’s health is so dependent on this weak child, his demise, that he hardly has the strength to repair it.

His only contact has been with Bellatrix and Lucius, his two closest followers, or at the very least his most competent. If they notice his poor health they are too frightened to comment on it, and that’s plenty enough for the Dark Lord to carry on with.

He stands in the foyer of Malfoy manor. 

“Draco,” he says, “come forward. The rest of you may leave.” 

Lucius, Bellatrix and Narcissa climb hastily to their feet in their leaving, only Narcissa sparing a glance for her son before Lucius has a none too gentle hand around her upper arm and she’s being pulled out behind him. Voldemort smiles in no warm way. A good choice for Lucius Malfoy.

Draco steps forward, eyes cast downward and body trembling, every inch of it. Voldemort only regards him coolly for a few minutes, dragging it out. “Do tell me how your progress with Albus Dumbledore has come along.”

Draco swallows. “I made a mistake, my Lord, but it hasn’t been traced back to me and I’ll keep working.”

Voldemort hums, enjoying the quaver of Draco’s voice. “What was this mistake?”

“I cursed an opal necklace my Lord, and imperiused Rosmerta in Hogsmeade to pass it on to Katie Bell, who was imperiused to deliver it to Dumbledore. But it- it touched her, through a hole in her glove, and she was cursed instead.”

“Was she killed?”

“No, my Lord.”

“Has she retained any memory of how this necklace might have reached her hands?”

“No, my Lord.”

“Well, then,” Voldemort says softly, “that was rather clever of you.” Draco’s eyes snap up, looking as if he may fall over from the shock of it. “However,” he goes on, and Draco drops his eyes back down at the change in tone, “I do not tolerate mistakes well. Let this be the last.” 

The warning in his voice doesn’t go unheard. Draco nods hurriedly. “Yes, my Lord. It will be.”

Voldemort levels him with another stare and Draco blanches further, well on the way to green. He’s terrified. Voldemort only smiles slightly. He could almost feel bad for the boy.

“You’re dismissed,” he says, and Draco scrambles.

Voldemort gives Draco sufficient time to distance himself before he rises and follows. He’s left Nagini with the Malfoys during the weeks he’s spent with the boy in the Riddle house. She’s been a crucial part of keeping tabs on the Malfoy family in his absence, but today he’s taking her back. For now the only thing he needs to be watching over is Harry, and as much as it pains him he still is unable to clone himself.

“_Master,_ _where have you been?__" _Nagini sounds none too pleased with Voldemort.

“_I’ve had other things to attend to._”

“_Have you brought a mouse?_”

He scoffs. “_No, I haven’t brought a mouse, but I’m glad to see you’ve missed me._”

“_A__re you taking me?_”

Voldemort regards her coolly for a few seconds. “_Yes, I’m taking you. So long as you behave yourself._”

“_Of course." _Voldemort decides she hasn’t so much as made the effort to sound sincere.

“_I’m taking you to the Potter boy. You are to watch him and report to me if he’s hurt or struggling with his health. You are not to touch him, bite him, or maim him. You are to let him sleep undisturbed. Are we understood?_”

She bobs her head in a serpentine version of a nod. “Y_es, Master._”

He narrows his eyes for a moment before flicking his hand to conjure up a mouse. Nagini hisses in glee, descending upon it in seconds. He lets her finish eating before offering an arm for her to wind around, apparting them both out of Malfoy manor and directly into the Riddle house, into the room where the golden boy himself lies sleeping.

Nagini freezes then turns to slide off of Voldemort and onto the wooden floor. Her nostrils flare wide. “_He is _ not _ a snack," _Voldemort reiterates.

“_No,_” Nagini hisses, reaching the bedpost and winding up and around it to glide smoothly onto the mattress. “_Much more…_”

“_What are you- Nagini, you are not to harm that boy._” She must hear the command in his voice but still doesn’t stop, continuing forward until she’s draped across the boy’s frail chest. She pauses there, flicking out her tongue briefly to taste the air, then proceeds to coil around herself, making a home around Harry Potter’s body.

“_Not to hurt,_” she hisses contentedly. “_Okay._”

Voldemort stares, somewhat dumbstruck. He flicks his wand, casting the charm to scan the boys vitals—and everything has improved. His heart-rate and breathing have dropped to near perfect levels for unconsciousness. He brushes Harry’s magic and it feels different than it has before. What once was a cool white is now a shimmering silver, brighter than it was prior and significantly more settled. Nagini has done to Harry what Voldemort is sure Harry does to him—and he has no idea why.

“_Nagini…_” and it almost comes out as a whisper.

She hisses softly, no words at all. Apparently none are needed.

Things for Voldemort change after that. Leaving Harry takes less of a toll on his body, presumably because of Harry’s newfound stability. If anything he makes _ more _of an effort to stay away, simply for the fact that the more often he enters that room the harder it becomes to tear himself out of it. Voldemort has decided that he prefers Harry awake—it’s far easier to dislike him when he’s talking.

The war drags on. The Order grows in strength much more quickly than is preferable. Progress on the Ministry is slow and the Death Eaters’ ranks aren’t growing. Recruitment has been nothing short of excruciating.

Harry Potter is not a hindrance. Dumbledore will be disposed of promptly one way or another. Now all that’s left to do is hit as many times as it takes for the tower to fall.

So hit they do, everywhere from Diagon Alley to ordinary muggle neighborhoods. They hit anywhere capable of making the light side shake. Voldemort is in power. He’s acting only to show the opposite side that there is nothing they can do mighty enough to hinder him. Voldemort is untouchable.

All but for a raven-haired boy. 

All but for an utter curse, a curse that sleeps and sleeps and sleeps…

A curse whose magic feels otherworldly, like a silver pool, like cool tendrils of pale light, like a cloak of mist settling upon the skin, and Voldemort is incapable of resisting its touch. He can’t stop himself watching the way it creeps past the boundaries of his own dark just slightly, marvelling at the grey mist. He can’t cease his awe at the way Voldemort’s onyx evaporates at the slightest touch of Harry, how a brush of skin is enough to bring him back to life. 

No, not skin. 

There is a line, however thin it is and however much it pushes at his self control—he will not touch. He will not be burned. He will not feel that pain again, that pain like nothing else, that torture… He sits. Harry’s magic never burns and he continues to remind himself that this is enough even as his body itches, and Voldemort doesn’t want to step away. 

It’s more terrifying now than it ever has been before. In the beginning Voldemort was forced into stagnancy by his incapability to leave Harry. He was frozen there outside of his own will, but no longer. He isn’t powerless and hasn’t been for a long while. With Nagini he’d been handed a chance.

Before this coma—no, before that moment in the Department of Mysteries; before Harry—Voldemort believed, _ knew, _ that of need or want, need was the greater evil. Dependency on anyone or anything was a liability. Voldemort needed nothing, for need was equated to weakness. To _ want,_ that was power. He wanted everything, and with that want he received. He wanted and so he took. Everything belonged at his fingertips.

He isn’t sure when it occurred or when this philosophy was shifted on its head, but need has somehow become the lesser of two evils. With want comes a choice, and Voldemort continues to make the wrong one. He repeatedly lets want become his downfall, because of _ need _ and _ want _ the latter is the one with an inherent choice. The choice being: Should he stay?

Voldemort doesn’t say no. Not even once. 

Weeks pass. Weeks of pointless war and endless sleep. Weeks of an empty room and Nagini’s hissing, of her demanding that Voldemort wake Harry _ now, _or she’ll bite Voldemort herself. Weeks of telling Nagini that he can’t. Weeks of her not believing him, winding around Harry’s body like an aggressively protective length of rope. Weeks of Voldemort looking, feeling, aching with the absence.

He sits. He feels, and it seems like enough. It _ is _ enough, until it isn’t, and the times that it isn’t have become unbearable. Voldemort craves more and still more. This is to Voldemort as any obsession he’s ever had—all consuming, relentless, insatiable. He’s never once known how to stop.

Harry’s magic doesn’t run dry and Harry’s health never stutters, so Voldemort takes and takes and Harry takes and takes and there’s nothing being lost, only filled and filled and filled…

It isn’t enough. Nothing is.

Voldemort won’t touch him—he won’t. Of all the things he’s caved to this is the one thing he won’t allow. If not for this Voldemort may be truly pathetic, but the fact that he’s withheld this urge is all the proof he needs that he hasn’t succumbed entirely to weakness yet. After all, this touch is what he craves above all things.

Voldemort doesn’t touch, but he’s so occupied with keeping the pads of his fingers out of reach that he does worse. One day he simply… slips.

Voldemort hasn’t touched Harry’s mind since he touched his wrist. It seemed too dangerous—too risky. After witnessing the reaction of touching Harry’s mark Voldemort could hardly predict what might happen if he were to touch his thoughts. Harry’s mind can’t be trusted not to lash out as his soul did. Nothing about Harry can be trusted, truly. If Voldemort isn’t reminding himself regularly he finds it quite an easy thing to forget.

So he forgets. His guard comes down. He slips. Into Harry’s mind he plummets, although plummet isn’t a fitting word in the least.

Voldemort hits bottom before he’s gone anywhere at all. There’s no drop, no entryway, no place to slip through. Voldemort hits white and stays there, in a stark place of absence stretching out in all directions. In this wide expanse of vacancy.

Harry’s mind has become... nothing. There is nothing. 

Harry is gone.

Thought it can’t be. Harry is too fierce a creature to simply go, to simply be erased. Five years Voldemort has been trying to kill the blasted thing and he’s lived; a simple cursed rest won't be the thing to take him. It’s ludicrous. Impossible. Harry is a cockroach and he’s lived through everything. For _ this _to be the way Harry Potter meets his demise is preposterous. It’s unacceptable.

Voldemort belatedly notes that the room is spinning. 

It was supposed to be a _ fight_. Voldemort was supposed to have earned the right to see the light leave Harry’s eyes as he’s the one to drain it from them. Voldemort was promised a final duel, a chance for Harry to fight him like an equal so that Voldemort could end him like an equal. It wasn’t supposed to be this.

This: Harry with closed eyes. A steadily rising chest. Pink skin. _ Alive. _Alive and as far from living as a person can possibly be. 

Voldemort feels horribly, horribly cheated. 

The room is still spinning as Voldemort feels a great heat rise up in his chest, a chest that seems tighter than it’s ever been before. Heavier, certainly, and he wonders if he’s managing to push air in and out of it at all. He must be, for there is a great fire in his throat and a flame needs oxygen in order to burn its way through anything, and Voldemort is ready to burn.

This isn’t the burn of Voldemort itching to cast the Cruciatus curse on him. This isn’t the burn that accompanies craving the pleasure of Harry’s screams. Voldemort recalls how Harry described it to him. _ “Think of it like a shock collar,” _he said. No, this is different. This is something impossibly worse.

Voldemort isn’t being burned for the audacity of wishing harm upon his soulmate; he’s being burned with the pain of seeing him so close to gone. Yet both flames are a punishment.

For whose fault is this but Voldemort’s own?

He begins throwing himself at the walls, at the white on all sides. He sends everything he contains toward the expanse of white and white and white because he needs in. He needs it to crack, and surely it will crack if he tries hard enough. Surely he can break this wall if he attempts it, because Voldemort gets everything he wishes.

Voldemort stole Harry’s sanity from him. Then, as if that weren’t enough, he took the rest of him, too. The Dark Lord wants his fight. He wants the ending they’ve both been picturing for years and he can’t do that if Harry is braindead. Harry needs to wake up. Harry needs to come back. Harry needs to stay.

He’s hitting the ghostly walls with bleeding fists, scraping the surface with jagged nails, searching for a weak spot. This must be a shell, he thinks, or a safe. This must be something meant to protect what’s left of Harry. This must be a container, for this can’t be all that’s left. This can’t be all that’s left of him. He can’t have become this.

Nagini is hissing and tightening her hold on the Boy Who Lived and Voldemort registers, distantly, that his vitals have shifted, although for better or for worse he can’t determine. He’s preoccupied with his own desperate attempts to break him—to break him open just wide enough to let the rest of him spill out onto the floor. 

“_You said not to hurt.” _ Nagini is spitting, confused and outraged. _ “He is not to hurt!” _

_ “Shut up," _Voldemort is spitting back in the midst of his craze. He has no way to explain to her when he is clutched so tightly within the fist of _ rage _ and _ panic _ and _ fear and fear and fear. _Voldemort had almost forgotten what fear tastes like.

Harry Potter needs to wake up. 

Harry Potter is being damaged. His back is arching off the bed with every muscle coiled yet still his face sits restful as ever. His muscles are jumping beneath the skin and his breaths are erratic, yet he’s sleeping. The white is still endless and his eyelashes are still resting lightly on the apples of his cheeks. His body thrashes while he lies untroubled. Blank. Harry Potter is empty.

Voldemort will break him open. He will destroy him if this is what it takes. 

“Harry Potter,” he’s saying, “wake up.” Somewhere in the midst of Nagini’s outrage he slips into her language, then he’s speaking in snakes tongue. “_Harry Potter. Open up for me. Break.” _

Harry’s limbs are jerking. Distantly Voldemort can hear his heartbeat, somehow, and it’s too fast. It’s fast enough to burst, surely, but apparently not fast enough for Harry to come back.

“_Wake up.” _ And this time Voldemort is sure he feels something cracking. Perhaps it’s Harry’s grasp on life. Perhaps it is Voldemort’s own sanity. _ Or perhaps, perhaps, Harry is surfacing. _

It only drives him further into this crazed panic. “_Come back._” He’s pounding at the walls. 

Voldemort is on the floor now, unsure of how he came to be there. Nagini is circling before him between his body and Harry’s. She’s more distressed than Voldemort has ever seen her, hissing and spitting and cutting back and forth across the floor. She seems torn between Harry and Voldemort which strikes him as funny, seeing as Harry is the one dying, until he realizes he may very well be dying too. Both of their bodies are being torn apart and pulled outward, both hearts feel on the verge of bursting, both bodies at their brink… 

Still, Voldemort doesn’t let go of Harry’s magic or of his mind, the place where his mind should be. He’s still tearing at every surface he can reach. The trauma has begun to reach his own body. His head is being drilled into from both sides, a violent pounding echoing just behind his eyes.

But there is a splintering. Voldemort can feel the fractures beneath his palms. 

“_Wake up. Come back. Wake up.” _ It is a mantra in snake’s tongue. “_Come back. Come back. It is not yet time.” _

The hairline fracture Voldemort has been pounding against splits further, and there it is, there’s something swirling beyond the medicinal white shell. That’s it, nearly close enough to touch.

“_It’s not time,” _ he keeps saying. “_It is not yet the end. It is not yet the end.” _

Nagini seems to be growing weaker. She’s no longer moving, no longer spitting, simply hissing quietly, pleading.

“_Wake up,” _Voldemort says, and he thinks they may be the last words he speaks. 

Without warning, like a little boy pulling his finger out of the dam, Harry is broken. The white shatters and he comes spilling out and out and out…. 

Harry’s eyes open.

Voldemort goes limp upon the floor, motionless. 

_ It is not yet the end. _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do yourself a favor and don't get comfortable with this version of Voldy  
find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	9. Safety

Harry is awake and the world is ending.

It’s all there; hundreds of memories—hallucinations? dreams?—hit Harry like a _ reducto. _There’s no gradual spill. Harry isn’t eased into it. He’s sleeping then he’s awake then his mind is being torn to shreds. None of it is real, except it’s all real, or possibly only some of them are real and Harry simply can’t tell which.

Harry can feel his body seizing—tossing and writhing and arching and shaking—and yet his mind is paralyzed in some purgatory of nightmare that he’s unable to make sense of.

He thinks he’s lying on a bed, or if not a bed something similarly padded. He’s been cradled, lying on top of the sheets to cushion his head and limbs as he thrashes. This isn’t too bad, he thinks. It could certainly be much worse.

Then another wave hits—he sees Ron in the acromantula nest, calling out Harry’s name; there’s Hermione and Luna dancing in the middle of the Great Hall at the Yule Ball; Tonks changing her hair from blue to green to fuscia to yellow and back again; the crack of his head on a table leg and wrist gory and bleeding and cut to the bone; a young Tom Riddle standing in the Chamber of Secrets, Fawkes the phoenix lying slaughtered beside him on the ground; Hermionie and Ron sitting beside Harry in the common room and laughing; Mrs. Weasley handing out dinner at the headquarters; Harry being circled and strangled by cords in the Department of Mysteries as red eyes burn madly; red eyes, always red eyes; Neville is dead, a knife buried deep in his throat and eyes glazed; Hedwig is gouging a basilisk’s eyes with her talons; Nagini is curling around his body—and he realizes that, no, it probably couldn’t.

Even as his body goes lax they keep coming, but Harry thinks they’re moving slower now, or at the very least less violently. He sees a headstone with his name carved into it; he sees Cedric Diggory beside him in the water of the prefect’s bathroom; he sees Hermionie flying a broomstick, catching a snitch one-hundred feet up in the air; he sees Voldemort standing across from him in a faded room.

Gradually the room he occupies now comes into focus. The walls are a dark ombre and the duvet he lays across grey and silken. Every piece of furniture is dark polished wood, the carpet dyed a deep brown to match the decor. The room hints at an older decade despite being in pristine condition.

The next thing he notices is the snake.

It’s Nagini. He knows it’s Nagini for two reasons: the first being that he would recognize the massive cobra in any circumstance, as it’s very hard to miss, and the second being that he’s _ been _ Nagini—he’s been _ inside _her—and that sort of experience tends to tie two beings together quite neatly.

She’s distressed, wrapping up and around the bedposts restlessly and hissing in a manner that isn’t entirely hostile. Despite knowing logically that his first instinct should be to distance himself he relaxes at the sight of her, though how or why he couldn’t hope to explain. He struggles to prop himself up at the very least, so as not to be in such a vulnerable position, but at the sight of movement she’s on the mattress and gliding towards him before he has even a chance to react.

It doesn’t come to matter much. Nagini drapes her long body back and forth across Harry’s, stopping to look at him from just a few inches of distance. Despite her weight admittedly making it a bit harder to breathe her contact is remarkable. Every trace of panic Harry might have been harbouring melts right off of him. His body heats in the most pleasant of ways. He’s very suddenly submerged in a catharsis that he isn’t able to riddle out with any sort of reasonable sense, so he decides not to try.

“Hello, there,” he says. Or tries to say. He isn’t sure the sound that comes out is in any way intelligible. There comes a low hiss in response. “You’re quite friendly, aren’t you?”

From somewhere at the end of a bed a long, pained groan sounds. Nagini is off him in an instant, gliding smoothly back to the carpet and disappearing from sight. Harry struggles to push himself up, craning his neck. If his head were just a bit higher he’d be able to see what has her so distressed.

When he succeeds he wishes he hadn’t.

The heap on the ground is all black cloak and pallid skin. Paper white. When stark eyelids snap open they’re red. With the sight of them comes a new wave of images, and he drops his head back down to gasp. He’s seen far too much of those red eyes. They’re everywhere—a single trigger with endless bullets.

He’s speaking in parseltongue. _ “Is he awake? Is he here?” _

Nagini hissing back. _ “Yes, master. He’s here.” _

Voldemort. _ “I want to see him.” _

Harry can only watch as a single skeletal hand wraps around the bedpost beside his feet and tightens, pulling the form to standing.

Gods. Seeing him now surely can’t be worse than seeing him in the onslaught of violent memories—dreams? nightmares?—in which he commits things far more heinous than looking at Harry from the foot of his bed, but it somehow is. Somehow there’s nothing worse than seeing him in the flesh, even if he does look nearly… human. 

The observation gives Harry pause. He doesn’t mean physically; Voldemort looks as much a monster as ever, maybe even sicker, somehow. He still has the skin of a monster, the eyes and serpentine features of a monster, but Harry has never seen an expression so human on his face. He wonders, vaguely, if someone has taken polyjuice. Although it would be quite hard, considering the lack of all body hair.

“Harry,” he whispers, and there’s a ring of emotion in his voice that surely shouldn’t be there.

Harry begins to grasp wildly at loose ends, trying to arrange his scattered memories in chronological order, sort out the realistic from the impossible, piece together the absolute mess of his current mind-scape. He needs to understand where he is and how he got here—he needs some semblance of control before he engages.

The oldest memories are the easiest to sort into true and false. There are endless visions of the Chamber of Secrets, but the reality of it seems engrained deeply enough in Harry’s mind to stand out from the rest. Hedwig wasn’t there and Fawkes wasn’t murdered. Tom Riddle didn’t live; Ginny did. The basilisk fang destroyed the diary and Tom Riddle along with it, which was Harry’s doing.

Luna Lovegood wasn’t the carrier of Voldemort during first-year and she wasn’t after the Sorcerer’s Stone. The trapdoor wasn’t guarded by Ripper, his aunt Marge’s bulldog. Hermionie didn’t drink the poison and Ron wasn’t knocked dead by the chess piece. None of this was real.

The more recent the memories the harder they are to decipher. Everything within the graveyard is a blurred mess. He thinks Cedric died—no, he’s nearly positive—but he can’t be sure. He knows Voldemort was resurrected then, but can't decide whether he came out deformed and maimed or came out quite young and handsome before he morphed into the snake-like being he exists as now. He can’t remember if Nagini was there in the graveyard or if that piece was fabricated.

Most importantly, he can’t remember how he came to be here.

No, most importantly, he fears this isn’t real either, and he isn’t keen on asking.

Voldemort is standing across from him looking lost. Harry gets the sense that the snake would be very willing to say whatever is necessary to make Harry respond in some way. His behavior is admittedly very odd and not at all something that suggests this is reality, but this feels truer to Harry than most things his mind has been assaulted by in the short time since waking up. There’s something clearer and sharper to this; something less like a mirage. 

“What happened?”

Merlin, Harry takes back his thoughts. This _ must _be a dream, and if not this must not be Voldemort in the flesh, not really, because there’s something like vulnerability on his face, and that’s… well that’s impossible. Absolutely ludicrous.

He looks unnervingly human.

“I…”

Speechless. Voldemort is speechless.

Harry inhales sharply. “What did you do to me?”

“I didn’t- you-” He let’s out a hiss of a breath. That’s something vaguely serpentlike, at least. “It’s quite a delicate thing to explain.”

Something in the words, in his voice, triggers some instinctual adrenaline that sends Harry’s blood spiking. He scrambles up to standing and promptly collapses sideways back onto the mattress. He curses and tries again, paying mind to his weak legs the second time around. Everything about him is weak. When was the last time he ate? Or stood?

Nagini hisses in distress and is back at his side, poised beside him on the mattress. She hisses again when he doesn’t pay her mind and he glances shortly at her in irritation, resting his hand on her back. The same eerie calm as earlier washes over his body. Unnerving, yes—but too convenient for Harry to question.

“What did you do to me?” Harry asks again, his voice insistent. “Tell me what you did.”

“You’ve been sleeping,” he says finally. “For a long time.”

“How long?”

“Weeks. Months, maybe. It’s hard to judge.”

“How did I get here?”

“I moved you from the room you occupied originally.”

“No,” Harry clarifies. “How did I _ get here? _”

Voldemort’s eyes slide shut. He curses under his breath. “Do you not remember?”

Neither of them have moved from where they stand facing each other on opposite sides of the room. The air seems like glass, as if it might shatter the moment either person tries to shift. There is a strange truce hovering in the space between them and Harry greatly fears what might happen if either were to break it. “I remember too much—different versions of the same things. I don’t know which ones actually happened.”

Voldemort clears his throat—again, a gesture that seems far too human. “What do you remember about the Department of Mysteries?” he asks.

———

Harry is going to end him.

Not that Voldemort wouldn’t be able to subdue him if the need arose, but after seeing Harry so close to death and constantly fretting over him for weeks he’s somewhat reluctant to hurt him again. He’ll at least allow him to regain a grasp on reality first. Or—maybe—he won’t need to hurt the brat at all. Perhaps he’ll have learned his lesson when he understands what Voldemort did to him and punishment will no longer be necessary.

For reasons Voldemort can’t quite understand he hopes that’s the case. Perhaps he’s just growing bored of the entire affair.

It would be foolish to let all of the time and energy he spent worrying that Harry would die to go to waste, after all, and the fact of the matter is that Voldemort still couldn’t hurt him even if he were to decide he wants to. Punishing Harry now would take significantly more forethought and effort than prior, when he could cast a _ crucio _on the brat and be done with it.

Harry can’t harm him either. So, what is there at risk, really?

“A lot of conflicting scenarios,” Harry eventually responds to Voldemort’s question regarding the Department of Mysteries.

“Do you remember the prophecy?” 

Harry’s face screws up. “I- yes. Now that you’ve asked anyway. _ A power you know not. Neither can live while the other survives. _Among other things, yeah?”

Voldemort swallows at the reminder of the brand on his wrist. “Yes, among other things. You remember how it was revealed to me?”

“I... “ Harry pauses and laughs wryly. “I _ dropped _it.”

“You did.”

“That’s a rather pathetic way to do myself in, isn’t it?”

“I would agree.”

“So you heard the prophecy and kidnapped me? Then brought me here?”

“Precisely.”

“Are the Order members okay?”

The question takes Voldemort aback. It’s the first time Harry has asked about anyone other than himself since being brought here—evidence that Harry hasn’t been himself for a very long time. Voldemort has half a mind to lie to him; he could tell him that Sirius Black is dead or that Nymphadora Tonks sacrificed herself for their werewolf ally—Lupin, was it? He could hurt him this way, easily, without any of the trouble that comes with the very _ thought _of harming him physically.

He doesn’t expect his own words. “All of your friends survived.”

Harry lets out a deep shuddering breath, letting his eyes slip shut for one vulnerable moment before carrying on. “Why are there so many false memories in my head? Why are so many impossible things ingrained in me as truth? _ What happened _after I was brought here?” At Voldemort’s hesitation he continues. “You’re going to tell me everything in detail until I know exactly what’s real and what isn’t.”

There’s a slight flare in Voldemort’s chest at the prospect of being ordered to do anything at all but it’s gone as quickly as it appears. He does, after all, owe Harry this.

“The room with the oak table that you remember is real. It’s where you were first placed.”

“How long was I there before you moved me here?”

Voldemort bristles a bit. “Until just after you fell asleep. Stop interrupting me.”

“No,” Harry says bluntly. “Go on.”

“You were tied for the first week or so, if I were to guess—until the first time I visited you. That was an… unpleasant interaction.”

Harry’s face has changed very suddenly, morphing into one of deep puzzlement on the edge of understanding. “Did you-” he stops suddenly then continues, “did you set the table on fire, and were my wrists wounded?”

Voldemort squints. “Yes.”

“Did it remain burnt and my wrists remain unhealed?”

A longer pause. Confusion. “Yes.”

“Merlin,” Harry breathes. “Gods, that solves so much.”

“Explain,” Voldemort orders. He doesn’t appreciate being the one lacking information.

“In the memories,” Harry explains, his voice edging on something like excitement, “or nightmares, hallucinations, whatever, little things are off sometimes. The table and my wrists are always one of those things. The memories in which the table isn’t charred and my wrists are completely healed, none of them make sense, and the ones where the table _ is…” _Harry’s eyes widen, then narrow just as abruptly. His face twists in something between disgust and horror. “Those… are.”

When Voldemort responds it’s hushed. There’s still an expanse of smooth space between them that he fears may send ripples that will turn into waves large enough to turn the boat over if he’s to speak too loudly—if he is to disrupt the sacred space between them. “Yes,” he murmurs, “that would clarify things.”

Harry raises his eyes to Voldemort slowly. “Everything else was real.” Voldemort watches Nagini wrap herself around Harry’s arm as he begins to tremble. “You- you tortured me. You gave me nightmares, and- and drove me to literal insanity, and you-” Here his face twists up in absolute revulsion. “You know I’m your soulmate. That’s why I’m alive, and even so, _ barely. _”

Harry’s voice has been growing higher in pitch with every word. “I let you touch me and you’re unable to touch me ever again, because your hands are dirty and your heart is rotted and your mind is a vile place. You’re a monster.” Voldemort isn’t sure when it happened, only that Harry is trembling so violently that Voldemort fears his body may give out. Nagini is twining down and around the boys legs in an attempt to calm him, to no avail. When he speaks again his voice is raised and bitter. “So what? You move me to a bedroom to appease your guilt? You worry I may never wake up so you bring your wretched _snake—_” Nagini hisses, clearly offended. “—You sit here like a bloody _army wife _waiting for me to wake up and break your wretched spell so that I don’t kill you right along with me, do you?”

“Harry,” Voldemort tries to say.

“You shut your mouth!” he hisses. “You will not say a single god damned word!” Voldemort’s head is spinning. His chest is aching with something other than the heat of the mark’s shock collar and he’s struggling to catch his breath. “Tell me, what were you expecting upon my waking? Me, amazed at the miracle of life and so _ thankful _ to see you again? Were you expecting me to praise you? My _ savior, _how incredible of you to bring my sanity back! How selfless!”

“Harry,” he interrupts again, and this time a clear warning rings in it. Harry, of course, hears nothing, or if he does sees it fit not to acknowledge it at all. 

“Whatever you were hoping for is fantasy, and you don’t deserve to be grateful for my consciousness, either. You don’t deserve relief. I’m not here to be your prisoner or your _ pet _.”

Voldemort’s head is rushing, relief and disbelief evolving steadily into rage. The insolence of this boy to treat Voldemort this way when he could have left Harry locked in that room, spiraling into insanity beyond redemption. The nerve he must have to insult Voldemort even after this; after he gave him a bed to sleep on and cared for him and brought him Nagini just to keep him content in his unconsciousness. The absolute disrespect of this child.

“I can put you back in that room,” Voldemort promises, voice low and even. “I can leave you there as long as I see fit; as long as it takes for you to recognize all that I have done for you.”

“Do it,” Harry laughs, voice edging on hysterical and tone dripping contempt. “I’m begging you, really! Lock me back in the room and starve me and send some horror in every now and then. Keep me sane so as not to inconvenience yourself, and stay as far the fuck away from me as is possible. Is that a compromise, _ Voldemort? _Do we have a deal?”

Voldemort resolves to leave only as his chest starts burning with a vigor. Yes, he indeed enjoyed the boy far more when he was sleeping. His wakefulness only serves as a reminder.

“I will give you some time to think this over,” he says stiffly. “I hope your stance regarding things will shift in that time.”

“Take me back to the first room,” Harry demands hotly. “I don’t want this one.”

“I’ll be sending food.”

Voldemort leaves. He burns and burns.

———

Harry hates this bedroom.

It feels like plastic—like a false ploy at hospitality. He hates that he’s sitting on the bed that he was cursed asleep upon for weeks, if not months. He hates that he can almost picture Voldemort sitting there in the corner, watching Harry. The room makes him feel raw and exposed and violated.

Harry didn’t dream, or if he did he can’t remember. Can’t remember his time asleep, that is; everything else he remembers quite vividly.

In a merciful world all that Harry imagined would have been forgotten while he slept off whatever curse he’d befallen after Voldemort’s torture, but Harry is not living in a merciful world. Harry spent months of his life not being able to sleep, and now that he’s able he can’t seem to find it anyway. There’s nothing behind his eyelids but flashbacks to things that never happened—that he _ knows _never happened—but have scarred him just as terribly as if they had. The nightmares his brain has spawned in the past six months cut just as deeply—though perhaps less neatly—as every true occurrence in the past six years. Each blow bruises and each wound bleeds the very same.

Harry can’t sleep because he doesn’t want to sleep. He can’t sleep because he is deeply afraid of what awaits him there. He had nightmares after Cedric’s death. He knows nightmares, but this—this fear—is about more than nightmares. A subconscious mind couldn’t hope to dream up the horrors that his diseased consciousness has. He isn’t worried about nightmares; he’s worried about what will make its way into them.

He truly does hate this room. He hates its soft carpet and fireplace and patterned ceiling. Harry misses peeled wallpaper and worn carpet covering hard floorboards that protested every time he chose to move; at least there he knew what he should be expecting.

At least there he didn’t need to sleep.

Harry really is tired. Truly. 

He hates this room. He despises the Dark Lord. He misses his bloody snake, as much as he’s loathed to admit it. Nagini made frequent appearances in his hallucinations—perhaps even in his waking life—and she was very rarely cruel, even as a figment of his wicked head. The only times Harry can recall her being violent were on Voldemort’s orders. How fitting.

Harry hates this room, he loathes the Dark Lord, and he wants Nagini. She’s better company than the backs of his eyelids and the portrait on the wall beside the bed. The woman in the portrait is robust and lavishly adorned. Someone has painted over her mouth and both eyes with long stripes of black paint. She sits there tauntingly, mute and blind and motionless. Harry would very much like someone to talk to.

There is a deep ache within him. It seems that during his weeks of being too far past sane to properly miss anyone or anything his longing for home has had sufficient time to build. Harry now lives with the threat of it all toppling down over his head and ending him. He misses Ron and Hermionie. He misses Luna and Ginny and the twins and Neville. Mrs. Weasley’s cooking. Tonks’ colored hair. Remus’ soft smile. He misses Dumbledore and Sirius—Sirius most of all. He misses the Burrow and Hogwarts and Grimmauld’s place. He misses Hedwig. His _ wand— _Merlin does he miss his wand. 

There is a longing within Harry that has been held back for some time, and it seems that now the boy with his finger in the dam has run off and there’s nothing left keeping the wave from drowning him. He stands in the middle of the room unable to even look at the bed, let alone lie in it, and focuses on keeping his head above water. If he stays very still and focuses very intently on keeping afloat he doesn’t think he will drown in this. The waves are stronger than him, though, and his legs tire easily, and he really should have gone to sleep a very long time ago. He’s treading water, though how long this will last he isn’t sure. He isn’t sure what happens when he slips under, either. He isn’t sure what drowning feels like, only that he hopes it will demand less energy than this.

Godric he’s tired, and there’s an odd tug in his stomach that he thinks is for Nagini, although he can’t for the life of him provide a reasonable explanation as to why.

———

Nagini is furious at being separated from Harry. She’s been in a fit since being torn away from him, circling the room, hissing and snapping at the air behind Voldemort’s ankles whenever he allows her close enough to reach. He contemplates the pros and cons of apparating somewhere in the Amazon and leaving her there but decides against it. 

The snake has apparently become very attached to Harry in the few weeks she spent with him. Eventually he agrees to send her back just to rid himself of her temper tantrum, along with a tray of food for Harry. _ “Ensure that he eats it slowly. He’ll make himself ill.” _

Then Voldemort waits. What he’s waiting for he isn’t sure, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do with this unnamed thing when it arrives, but he waits all the same. 

One day. He makes it one days before he returns to that room.

———

_ “Eat,” _Nagini hisses, twining herself around Harry’s feet.

_ “I don’t want it.” _

_ “Eat,” _she insists, as she has been since she appeared an hour ago.

Nagini frightened Harry half to death, arriving with no warning at his feet along with the tray of food that materialized on the bedside table, where it still sits untouched. He hasn’t eaten because the food troubles him. There’s a bowl of soup and a few pieces of sliced bread, both of which arrived steaming but have since gone cold, along with a glass of water. Compared with the stale bread Harry was fed sparingly upon arriving here the warm, fresh food is unsettling. He hasn’t tested his theory, but he suspects that if he were to finish the soup it would refill of its own accord like the plates at the Hogwarts’ feasts. He wonders if Voldemort was able to see his dreams the first week after he arrived. Is he aware of Harry’s nightmare, the one in which the plates refilled and he was forced to eat until the fullness split him right down the middle? Is that why he sent them—to torture him? Or is this simply kindness?

Harry doesn’t know, but he knows which one is worse.

_ “Eat,” _Nagini says again, placing her teeth gently on Harry’s bare foot. Not a bite. He isn’t sure if it’s meant to be a reassurance or a warning, but one way or another it serves its purpose.

_ “Alright,” _ he snaps at her, _ “alright. But it’s cold.” _

Immediately after he’s spoken the words the soup makes the slightest gurgling noise and promptly resumes its steaming. Harry curses under his breath.

Grudgingly Harry disentangles his feet from Nagini, retrieves the food and sits on the mattress with a slight twinge of discomfort. He glares at the tray on his lap for a few moments before the hunger he’s been resolutely ignoring strikes with a vengeance and he caves to its whims, picking up the spoon shakily.

_ “Slowly,” _ Nagini says lazily, settling beside him on the bed. _ “You’ll be sick.” _

He tries to heed her advice, he really does, but when the first bite goes down he’s taken under right along with it. It’s been so long since he’s eaten, and the soup is impossible to resist_ . _There are potatoes and chunks of beef steeping in the broth along with peas and corn and carrots. For Harry to be expected to eat slowly is ridiculous. The first bowl is gone in minutes, then the bread, then the second bowl as his tray refills, three glasses of water, as much as he can take… 

It’s a miracle he isn’t sick with it all, although the pain in his stomach is very present, but between the food and the warm room and the soft bed he can’t blame himself for suddenly becoming very, very drowsy. He feels heavy and warm and full, and thus settles down to rest with very little guilt at all. He can’t be bothered to fight against a thing that he knows will feel so wonderful, even more so when the bed he’s been offered is something like a cloud. Nagini is curled up at his feet when he slips off.

Hours later, Harry wakes up ready to kill.

_ “He drugged me!” _ He’s raving, pacing the room back and forth and directing his words spoken in parseltongue vaguely toward the snake coiled in a heap by the armchair. _ “He put me in a coma for weeks, just to drug me to sleep not even twelve hours after he rips me awake!” _

_ “Were you going to sleep in any other circumstance?” _

He shoots a spiteful glare at Nagini. She has no place being reasonable. _ “Irrelevant,” he dismisses. “I can’t even eat without worrying that this horror is going to drug me or poison me or- or _ sabotage _ me in some way. I can’t trust anything! He could have just conjured you up for all I know! Maybe you’re not even real!” _ Nagini hisses in offense. _ “This is _ infuriating_.” _

_ “Perhaps you’d like to tell him so?” _

_ “Brilliant idea!” _he half-shouts, throwing his hands up in the air. The words are intoned with a certain air of sarcasm, but Nagini is either unable to detect it or simply doesn’t care, because moments later there are footsteps sounding through the corridor just outside the room.

Harry pales. “You stupid snake,” he says in English, not wanting to _ actually _offend her. Who would he talk to if he were to scare her off? It isn’t as if he’ll find another giant snake to keep as company. 

He freezes at the center of the room and backs toward the furthest wall as the door opens to Voldemort, there in the flesh and seeming not at all pleased. He looks to Nagini before so much as glancing at Harry. _ “Is there something I can assist you with?” _

At her lack of answer he turns to Harry, his face betraying no expression aside from mild irritation. “What is it?”

“You drugged me.”

He hums. “Did I?”

Harry narrows his eyes. “I think I’ve had more than enough involuntary rest at your hands. Do you disagree? Or is it that you agree but can’t stand the thought of no longer having power over me?”

“You wouldn’t have slept,” he says, and damn him to all hell for being so calm.

“I would have _ eventually_,” Harry argues, “now that I don’t have your bloody curse keeping me awake. You forced me conscious for weeks, then you forced me _ asleep _ for weeks, and now that I’m free of the effects of either you won’t let me _ have _it.”

“It was an act of kindness, Harry. I fed you and I ensured you’d be able to sleep peacefully afterward.”

“Fuck you _ and _ your kindness!” Harry spits, stepping forward before he can consciously stop himself. He watches Voldemort stiffen at the movement, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know what cards you’re waiting to lay down or what you’re playing at with this, but it’s sick. I don’t want you pretending to be _ nice _. It’s disgusting.”

“Would you rather I torture you?” Voldemort asks, and although he doesn’t seem any less relaxed than before there’s something dangerous in his tone. “Would you rather go back to that? I watched you wander in madness for months before I _ mercifully _let you sleep. You should be thanking me.”

Harry laughs and there’s something unhinged in it. “Why not? Starve me, Voldemort. Put me back in chains. Do whatever you need to remind yourself of what you are. You’re not kind and you’re not good—you aren’t even _ human _ . Of course I’d take the _ cruciatus _over having my head toyed with by you; I’m not a fool.”

Voldemort tilts his head, red eyes glinting, and Harry nearly rejoices. _ There it is, _ he thinks. _ There’s the monster. _

Something has flipped, a switch so easily triggered that Harry isn’t sure what did it. What Harry saw for those few brief seconds after waking up—the humanness in Voldemort’s face—is gone. That mask, whatever its intended purpose, has been dropped, and here Voldemort stands in all his horrific glory. 

There’s a darkness to his aura, a venomous energy to his magic that Harry can feel licking at his skin. It’s a bite to his flesh, a stinging, but even so there’s a certain safety in this that Harry revels in. This is the monster that Harry has learned to evade. This is the Voldemort that Harry knows and has always known—there’s nothing to be afraid of here.

He can see him now. There’s Voldemort with a sadistic smile on his lips and eyes burning red with something—rage or amusement or anticipation, it’s never easy to tell. Here is the Voldemort that first stepped into the room with Harry’s wrists bound in front of him, the Voldemort of Little Hangleton, the Voldemort that threw his head back and laughed standing in the Department of Mysteries. Safe. This is safe.

“Do you mean that, Harry? Would you like to be tortured?”

There’s something in his voice that Harry should surely be wary of, but his skin is thrumming with anger and adrenaline and he can’t recall even the concept of common sense, let alone how to use it. 

“Yes,” he says, “I mean it.” Then he tilts his head, smiling. “But you’re powerless to do even that, aren’t you?”

Between one moment and the next Voldemort has materialized behind him, one hand clutching the back of Harry’s robes so as not to touch skin and his voice dancing along Harry’s neck, setting his hair on end. “Let’s see,” he murmurs, “shall we?”

Then Harry feels a compression on all sides and Voldemort is pulling him along, apparating out of the bedroom, out of the house and onward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	10. Mistake

Harry has made a mistake.

Voldemort and Harry apparate into a wide space that Harry would loosely compare to a ballroom. It’s large in all dimensions and adorned with no mind paid to expense. An impossibly long dining table reaches across the center of the room with high backed chairs lining the sides and gold detailing on the walls along with classic wallpaper. The floor, that looks to be porcelain, is polished to the point of reflection.

What catches Harry’s eye is the mural stretching across the ceiling far above them. If Harry were to guess what Renaissance art looks like in the wizarding world, this would be it. It’s a depiction of a gruesome battle with wizards locked in duels all across, some lying wounded or bleeding and others very clearly dead. In another area are centaurs, rearing up on their hind legs and wielding spears and bows, shooting each other down. Mixed into the scene are giants, who don’t seem to be on a team so much as simply enjoying smashing anything within smashing distance, including wizards. There’s also a generous amount of blood.

It’s all a bit gruesome for Harry’s tastes but impressive nonetheless, and he will admit it sets a certain ambiance that fits the present conflict.

Voldemort remains behind Harry. He’s grabbed Harry’s wrists above the cloth of his shirt-sleeves and pulled his arms across his chest, holding them at his sides. Harry struggles valiantly, legs thrashing and torso jerking away from the monster pressed against his back, but even Harry is aware his efforts are in vain. Voldemort remains so unphased that Harry wonders if he’s moving at all. Voldemort’s body is like a wall. Harry wants to hit him.

Harry’s struggle is valiant both for the fact that any reasonable person would have given up on release by now, and the fact that he’s struggling not only against Voldemort’s grip but against the seductive calm that comes with it. 

Harry was of the belief that after the bond backfiring, or whatever it can be explained as, the positive effects would have been gone. It was only then, after all, that Harry truly fell off the deep end, and all he or Voldemort have been to each other since is cruel. He isn’t so foolish as to believe they could make the bond go away, but he did think that perhaps it had just… broken.

Voldemort hasn’t yet been close enough to touch. He hasn’t been close enough to Harry to feel his body heat, which is, Harry notes, warmer than he might expect for a man so serpent-like. The bond was dormant for all that time, never gone. They’ve set off an alarm and the more prolonged the contact the closer Harry comes to succumbing to it. A part of him—a much larger part than he’s pleased with—is drawn to the violent embrace. It pays no mind to any facts of the situation, including that the thing wrapped around him is a sociopathic murderer and that his embrace is in no way well intended. 

Harry’s fighting is losing its vigour. He blames it on exhaustion.

They stay there, Voldemort holding him in an iron grip and waiting for Harry to tire himself out. When Harry has gone nearly still Voldemort hums softly, just beside his ear.

He doesn’t need to say anything, doesn’t need to snap his fingers, doesn’t need to make a single movement before two cracks break the silence. Two wizards appear without being summoned by any means Harry can make out. First Lucius Malfoy, then shortly after Bellatrix Lestrange, until two of the wizards Harry loathes most in the world stand before him in the flesh. Harry goes slack at the sight, unaware that he’s fallen back against Voldemort’s chest until a wave of smugness and satisfaction that surely doesn’t belong to him hits, and Merlin, when did that begin?

“Are you quite done then?” Voldemort asks. Harry doesn’t grace him with a response, a silence that doesn’t seem to bother the snake. “Lucius, Bellatrix,” he acknowledges the two Death Eaters. His voice echoes in the wide space, a sound that’s far more frightening than it has the right to be. Both Bellatrix and Malfoy fall to their knees, uttering a _ my Lord, _and Harry has to wince at how very reverent Bellatrix’s voice sounds. Malfoy’s, in contrast, rings with poorly suppressed fear, but both Death Eaters are eyeing him all the same. Bellatrix looks curious to the point of near-fascination, her heavy eyes jumping between Harry and the form behind him rapidly, thick eyelashes fluttering with the movement. Malfoy's face, however, is schooled expressionless, although keeping his eyes off Harry seems to be as difficult a feat for him as it is his companion.

“I have a gift for the two of you,” Voldemort says softly, his grip not loosening on Harry even with the sudden absence of struggle. Harry is, much to his distaste, finding an involuntary pleasure in Voldemort’s touch. He isn’t _ pleased _with it, but knowing that there’s no positive outcome in this situation and without even a trace of doubt that this will be short-lived, he doesn’t feel passionately about the need to fight against it. The only thing to do is see what Voldemort is planning to do to him.

“Yes, my Lord?” Bellatrix breathes in barely contained excitement. 

He can tell where Voldemort’s eyes are without even looking, just seeing how Bellatrix cowers the slightest bit then relaxes as Lucius mimics her action, although to a much greater degree. Harry can’t help but wonder what Voldemort had said or done to make Lucius this afraid—what he’s being threatened with.

“To your disappointment, I’m sure, we’ll be starting with Lucius today.” Bellatrix’s lips fall nearly to a pout. Rather than irritation as Harry might have expected, there’s only a passive amusement from Voldemort. He’s fond of Bellatrix, Harry realizes, or at least finds her entertaining. Maybe it’s the proximity causing Harry to pick up on Voldemort’s emotions, he speculates. An unspoken benefit of the bond, perhaps, although he’s never before heard of soulmates sensing each other this way.

Well, odder things have happened between Harry and Voldemort. He isn’t sure why he would let this be the first to phase him.

“Lucius,” Voldemort continues. The platinum haired man peers up at him through a few loose strands that have slipped from the knot at the back of his head. “I’ll be allowing you some fun with the Boy Who Lived.” It’s clear that the Dark Lord’s phrasing is generous. His ‘allowance’ is nothing less than a command.

From Bellatrix comes a sharp inhale of breath. Her eyes are bright and crazed.

“Fun, my Lord?” Lucius hesitantly questions.

“I’m growing tired of my own torture, Lucius. I’d like to hear his screams at the hand of someone else’s wand.”

“You-” Lucius swallows. “You’d like me to torture him?”

Voldemort’s irritation prickles Harry’s own skin. “Have I been unclear?”

“No, my Lord. Perfectly clear.”

“Stand,” Voldemort says shortly. Lucius obeys.

“Harry,” Voldemort says softly, too near his ear for Harry not to shudder. “I’m going to let you go now, and I trust that you understand the consequences if you are to run.” Harry nods shakily.

Harry has very clearly taken advantage of the fact that Voldemort hasn’t been able to hurt him thus far. He’s grown comfortable with the ability to taunt and goad without consequence, even begun taking pleasure in his own ability to rile up the Dark Lord. There’s a rush in it. No one else has the power to make Voldemort angry without the consequence of absolutely certain death. This power is Harry’s and Harry’s alone. 

Somehow he hadn’t yet realized that he isn’t invincible. The entire world, minus one, still has the power to kill him. He’d naively assumed that Voldemort wouldn’t let another lay eyes on him, that his possessiveness and fixation would keep Harry with him and only with him. He’d assumed for reasons he can’t explain that Voldemort would insist Harry _ his _to hurt, that if he wasn’t able no one would be.

Harry grew comfortable with the darkest wizard alive.

Harry has made a mistake.

Voldemort shoves Harry hard enough for him to land hard on his knees. He hisses at the pain but nothing more. If he’s to be tortured he won’t be giving Voldemort any more satisfaction than he’s forced to. He glances up spitefully but doesn’t stand; he’ll end up on the floor one way or another—he might as well save himself the fall.

Voldemort gestures with his hand. “Please, Lucius, at your leisure.”

Harry scorns himself for his shaking. He’s done this before, he reminds himself. He’s felt this. They don’t deserve to see him afraid. So he makes sure to meet Malfoy’s eyes as the man raises his wand. Let him see the pain, he thinks. Let him live with it. Malfoy isn’t nearly as cold as he pretends to be, Harry knows; no one who has raised and loved a child can be. 

“Yes,” Harry says, a ghost of a smile on his face. “At your leisure.”

He hopes that Lucius sees Draco in his face.

At that Lucius’ gaze hardens, but Harry sees the tremor in his hand as it raises. He feels some cruel satisfaction in that at least, and the guilt that prickles somewhere in the recesses of Harry’s mind is too far off to dwell upon. Harry understands that he has become jaded.

His knuckles pale as his grip tightens on the wand and Harry braces himself for the blow.

Lucius says, “_Crucio. _”

Harry waits, and nothing comes.

“_Crucio, _ ” Lucius says again, voice firmer. When still nothing comes he tries again, and again, over and over as his voice gradually becomes more desperate. He wants to, Harry can tell, or if not _ want, needs. _There is more than Lucius’ pride at risk now, as there always is when you’re placing bets against the devil.

The desperation in his voice almost fills the room, but Harry is too busy choking on the thick derision from behind him. All of Voldemort’s emotions come in waves, heavy and powerful and overwhelming. What must it be like to feel everything at such a blinding height? It’s really no wonder he’s a mass murderer—if Harry had to endure this intensity of emotion at all times he likely would be, too.

It was more subdued when Harry was against his chest, he thinks, and wishes he hadn’t.

Lucius is slipping apart and Harry nearly pities the man. It isn’t his fault, after all, and how should he know that?

“Enough,” Voldemort says softly after some time of watching Lucius suffer, his voice somehow ringing through the silence despite its gentle cadence. There’s something to be feared in it nonetheless. 

Lucius drops his wand, breathing shakily and body trembling, face twisted in an awful mix of terror and anguish. “How pitiful,” Voldemort murmurs.

Bellatrix is shaking for entirely different reasons, nearly vibrating with excitement. “Please, my Lord, please allow me, it would be an honor.”

Harry hasn’t looked at Voldemort even once since landing inside the building and refuses to change that now. Even so, he can almost see the cruel twist of his mouth just from the waves of emotion being projected toward him. 

“Yes, I do believe it’s your turn.” He gestures for her to stand and she scrambles up, nearly tripping over herself in her haste.

“First,” he says, “as Lucius can’t seem to remember how to cast a simple _ crucio_, I believe it’s in his interest that we refresh his memory.” Bellatrix looks less excited at this prospect but in no way reluctant.

“As you wish, my Lord.” She wastes not a second before she’s uttering the word, sending Lucius to the ground screaming. It’s instantaneous. It happens too quickly for Harry to process what’s happening before the damage has been done.

Harry watches, a sickness twisting his stomach. He hasn’t yet seen another person hit with the Cruciatus curse. He’s watched Barty Crouch Jr. torture a spider while demonstrating the unforgivables and he’s experienced the pain for himself, but it’s somehow worse seeing another person crippled by the pain, as if it’s clearer when your head isn’t submerged in it. When you’re under the curse the world narrows to nothing but you and the pain. Watching it gives a certain perspective that you can’t have while your body is being ripped to shreds.

Lucius is arching, his screams hoarse and his hair slipping from its knot, strands ending up stuck to his mouth where saliva is pooling at the corners. It’s gruesome. Disgusting. Harry wants to look away but doesn’t—of course he doesn’t.

Bellatrix lets up for a few seconds. She watches passively, pupils dilated, as Lucius rolls over onto his side and brings his knees to his chest. For a few moments he lies there panting before she hits him once more. 

The second time is worse. By the third interval it begins to seem less brutal, although whether that’s due to Lucius growing tired or Harry simply becoming used to it is unclear. He desperately hopes that it’s the former.

The longer it goes on the closer Harry feels to being physically sick. He isn’t afraid because he can’t afford to be afraid, but he isn’t ready. There’s a growing sense of unease palpable in the air, but he can’t tell if it’s his own or being projected by Voldemort.

“That’s enough.” Bellatrix ceases immediately, turning to Voldemort with a mad gleam in her eyes, a satisfied smile splitting her face and paying no mind to Lucius spitting up blood on the floor beside her. Harry has to forcibly look away from him. “Do you wish to try with another target?”

“Oh, yes,” she breathes. “Yes, my Lord. Please.”

“Carry on then.”

Harry doesn’t meet her eyes as he did Lucius; he feels that with Bellatrix it's wiser to avert them as if he’s trying not to challenge a wild predator. Or a rabid dog. It isn’t an awful comparison.

Harry’s fear is fading to apprehension. There’s no way to tell if Bellatrix will be able to cast it, even if Lucius clearly couldn’t. Perhaps it’s lack of willpower and much is needed to push through whatever effect of the bond hindered Lucius. Perhaps a lack of cruelty. Whatever it is, Harry is nearly certain that Bellatrix will have more of it than Lucius. No quality that enables a person to torture is going to be good-natured, clearly, and Bellatrix is crueller than perhaps anyone apart from Voldemort himself.

Harry isn’t thinking about Voldemort. He isn’t thinking about how this feels bizarrely like a betrayal. He isn’t thinking about how impossibly little sense that makes, or why he would. Harry isn’t thinking about anything aside from Bellatrix’s wand trained on him, because he can’t. He can’t. 

Harry isn’t so naive as to believe he’s safe. In his peripheral he can see her manic gaze trained on him.

“C_rucio_.”

This time it hits. Harry is glad not to have stood up.

He doesn’t know when or how he ends up on his back, only that by the time he finds any sense of self-awareness he’s flat on the ground. If he were able to think he’d picture himself much like Lucius—back arching and body writhing and screaming himself hoarse. There are many pains someone can become jaded to, and Harry has become jaded to most; the Cruciatus curse isn’t one of them. He really did think this would be easier.

If Harry were able to think he would register the distress coming from the other side of the bond. If he were able to tell apart the pain from his mind he would know that half the agony comes not from himself but from the soul he’s irreversibly tied to. If Harry were able to think he’d know that there is a definite end to the pain nearing, because there is only so much Voldemort can endure before crippling to it. Harry would know that revealing his own weakness and the inevitable truth of where it comes from to his Death Eaters is the last thing Voldemort will ever do.

Harry doesn’t know because Harry can’t think. It cannot last forever, except that it must last forever, except that time is an abstract concept to this sort of pain. It’s a pain that knows no beginning or end, only the space between stretching on in all directions, endlessly. It cannot last forever, except that it lasts forever. Except that Harry knows no end, and surely there is no end, and then there is. There is and he’s reached it.

There are a few seconds afterward that seem to stretch on forever in which Harry can still feel the ghost of his pain. He gasps and chokes on the inhale, tries to move and can’t manage it. He wonders if his glasses have fallen off—although at this point they’re so filthy that he may see better without them—before he realizes that it’s only the aftereffects of pain blurring the world. Nothing is swimming and no sound is coming from underwater; that’s just Harry.

Bellatrix grins for a few seconds, revelling at the sight of Harry entirely broken at her feet. Then, just as she did Lucius, she flicks her wand again. The pain this time lasts only a few seconds before Voldemort says, “That is enough.” It makes no difference. It cannot last forever, and yet it lasts forever.

Bellatrix lets up. Harry wants to roll over to curl into a fetal position but refuses to give any wizard present the satisfaction. He lies there, staring up at the ceiling as the mural above him slowly comes into focus. Towards the corner he sees a wizard on his knees, mouth spread wide in agony, screams frozen and silenced as Harry’s were. He looks at the man and laughs weakly. 

As his senses clear he becomes increasingly aware of the bond strained tight between Voldemort and himself. Whereas Harry would have expected triumph at the prospect of a loophole he feels only a great tangle of distress. There’s no smugness, no victory—just a mess of emotions Harry can’t begin to decipher. What he can make sense of is the physical signals coming from Voldemort. He’s in pain. He feels the pain Harry does, but surely not to the same extent. If he felt it to the same lengths he would be on the ground beside him, breaking apart next to him. He wouldn’t be standing.

Nonetheless, there’s something there.

“That’s enough, Bellatrix,” he says again, his voice hard and cold in a way it wasn’t before.

“My Lord, can’t I have a bit more time? He’s beautiful writhing about on the ground that way. His screams…” She trails off almost wistfully.

Harry feels then what he hoped would prevent this mess from the beginning. There’s a nearly staggering wave of dark possessiveness at her words—and although Harry doesn’t in any way _ want _it, he can’t help but think bitterly than it would have been wonderfully convenient if that possessiveness had presented itself an hour ago rather than now, when all it’s achieving is nearly knocking Harry unconscious. He’s as sure then as he’s ever been about anything—no one else is going to hurt him in Voldemort’s presence. Not ever again. 

“I’m pleased that you’re enjoying yourself,” Harry coughs from the floor, “but I’d really rather you didn’t.”

Bellatrix’s face twists in anger and she raises her hand, no doubt to curse him again. In the same instant her wand has flown directly into Voldemort’s palm. He tuts. “Now, Bellatrix. Did I or did I not tell you that you’ve done enough?”

Instantly her gaze lowers to the floor. “You did, my Lord.”

“Indeed.” Lucius has stood by now as well, observing the scene with his head slightly bowed. “You did beautifully, Bellatrix. Lucius,” he nods at him with no emotion, merely to acknowledge his presence. “You both can see yourselves out.” 

Harry doesn’t understand how he’s remaining so calm even with the roiling anger Harry’s nearly drowning in.

He holds out Bellatrix’s wand and she steps forward to take it gratefully. “Thank you, my Lord.”

Harry has craned his head to watch the exchange and could almost be sick at the way she looks at the snake. Her drooped eyes are reverent, hungry, almost _ lustful. _At that his nose wrinkles in disgust. Voldemort only nods in a gesture of dismissal, and in the next moment both Lucius and Bellatrix are gone.

The rush of emotion immediately after their departure makes Harry drop his head back to the floor. It’s enough to feel a bit like his skull is imploding. “Will you quit that?” he snaps, albeit weakly. “You’re gonna blow me up.”

It pulls back enough for Harry to at least identify fragments of it. A dark, heavy possessiveness that seems to overshadow everything else; fury; distress at seeing Harry in pain, presumably; the same sharp echo of physical pain that Harry’s feeling.

“What the _ fuck _was that?” Voldemort hisses. Harry once again arches his neck to look up at Voldemort from where he lays on the marble floor, not quite trusting himself to move yet and knowing that Voldemort himself is really no threat to him. There’s a headache beginning to pound behind his eyes, and Voldemort’s onslaught of emotion isn’t helping much at all.

“Shock collar,” he says, and that’s perfectly explanatory for both of them.

“And this- this _ feeling_? The emotion—what is that?”

“The effects of being in such close proximity, I suspect. A kickstart to the bond.”

“Have you ever managed not to be a nuisance?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Harry says. There’s laughter in his voice and Harry doesn’t know why. Post-torture hysteria, maybe. Relief at the fact that Voldemort’s loophole isn’t effective. His lack of sanity showing through, though he did think that had made its leave.

Voldemort begins pacing, as he tends to do. Despite the restless habit his projection is mellowing, the dark obsessiveness receding and the fury dwindling down to an intense irritation. 

“The absurdity of Lucius?”

“Why are you asking _ me _for answers?” Harry says exasperatedly. A pang of irritation kicks through the bond accompanied by a dark look and Harry drops it. “I have a theory,” he admits, pushing himself up into a sitting position, feeling steadier.

“Very well, spit it out then,” Voldemort says, his hand twitching on his wand and cloak billowing while he paces, sending drafts of air toward Harry.

“Well, Lucius didn’t really want to hurt me, did he? The only reason he had to harm me was your orders. Outside of your own will he wouldn’t, and you aren’t allowed to. So Lucius being unable to hurt me because you want him to isn’t too different from your wand being unable to hurt me because your intention is what drives it.” Voldemort actually seems to consider this, which Harry finds oddly pleasing. “Bellatrix, however.” He pauses and laughs a little. “That bitch would have me dead. She doesn’t need your orders.”

Harry’s head is becoming clearer by the second and his strength is returning. Along with that he can feel the brief connection of their bond begin to ebb away, taking the arresting calm with it and leaving in its place the anger that hasn’t fully hit him yet. He absently wonders what took it so long.

A few moments of silence pass before Harry breaks it. “Did it feel good?”

“What?” Voldemort’s tone carries a certain venom that it hasn’t yet within this particular conversation—which has been quite civil, actually.

“Did it feel good to watch me suffer?” Harry clarifies, heat building in his chest. He observes Voldemort carefully for any visible reaction, the bond fading fast. Voldemort’s footsteps cease but his expression doesn’t change. “This is a purely research driven question,” Harry adds, subtly pushing for an answer.

“No,” Voldemort says after a long silence, clipped. “It didn’t feel good. It… hurt.”

“Physically?”

“Not physically,” he clarifies. His voice is completely clinical. “but I still felt it, in a way. The way you explained injury in dreams—you can’t physically feel it, yet you know you’re in pain, and the idea of hurting is enough to make it real.”

Harry flinches at Voldemort’s words. His memory of that particular encounter is vivid, and he wishes it weren’t. He thinks about closing his eyes to it, but he can _ feel _as much as see it, and it’ll be etched somewhere on the backs of his eyelids, anyway.

He was already nearly lost in his insanity, although it wasn’t anywhere near as broken as it would be by the time he was put to sleep. That day was the first time Voldemort had seen it, and the first time he had caved to the instincts of the bond—the first time either of them had.

Harry was convinced Voldemort was a hallucination, that being the only reason Voldemort was ever allowed close enough to Harry to touch. He didn’t think it was _ real, _ and so there was no harm in it. It wasn’t a ridiculous assumption, either, with how kind he was. How gentle. How utterly human. Harry’s head was tucked into his neck and Voldemort was _ warm warm warm _.

_ “This is odd,” Harry mused. “I usually can’t feel in these.” _

Voldemort’s arms were hanging limp at his sides, every inch of him paralyzed, and Harry was sighing against his neck.

_ “It’s pain playing pretend.” _

Harry was curled against his chest like a child and Voldemort was frozen, then the movement that changed everything, something so simple, so effortless; he lowered his nose—or rather, where his nose would have been—to Harry’s head, pressing his face against the boy’s nest of hair.

_ “You know it’s there, and you can scream and cry with the knowledge of it even if you feel nothing.” _

Then Harry was clinging to him and he was crying, and Voldemort was so helpless and Harry could _ tell _ that he wanted to do something to fix it. Whether instinct or not, Voldemort wanted to comfort Harry. He wanted to calm him. He wanted to be _ kind _.

When Voldemort grabbed his wrist Harry pressed himself closer to his chest and _ begged _. 

_ “Touch it, please. It hurts when you’re looking but not touching.” _

It did hurt. It burned and itched and ached something terrible within him, and Harry was surer in that moment than he’d ever been about anything. He was surer than when he kicked his broom off the ground as a first-year and caught Neville’s remembrall; surer than when he cast a patronus for the first time; surer than he was after defeating a dragon during the second task. This was something truer than all other truths: Harry knew without a doubt that if Voldemort didn’t touch him right then, he would die.

So he touched. Whatever unspeakable spell hung between them severed. Everything shattered.

It doesn’t seem real, now. It seems like something Harry dreamt up, and he can almost convince himself that it was, except it couldn’t have been, because here is Voldemort remembering it, and how Harry wishes he wouldn’t. Voldemort has no right to bring to mind the only moment of true tenderness Harry has ever witnessed from him minutes after he’s stopped screaming on the porcelain floor. It isn’t fair to take the two versions of Voldemort that exist as entirely different beings within Harry and set them side-by-side. Harry shouldn’t be forced to look them both in the face and see the same eyes. He shouldn’t be forced to admit which of them is real.

Harry’s eyelids slide shut. Whatever anger that’s been simmering within him heats to dangerous temperatures.

There is a Voldemort somewhere within his memory, even if he existed for no longer than an hour, that could have been Harry’s soulmate. Harry has met him, and he tries valiantly to pretend that he never did. Harry reminds himself that who he saw wasn’t real. _ This _ is Voldemort. This is who he’s been bonded to. This is who he’s been cursed with and this is what he will have to endure.

For Voldemort to remind him of anything otherwise is cruelty. Harry can bear torture. He would _ prefer _ torture. Harry would take a few more rounds of what he did today if it meant wiping that memory from his head. More than a few. As many as it took.

All Harry has ever wanted was to be loved. From his first visit to Diagon Alley and his first conversation with Ollivander. _ “When you find your soulmate, you’ll know.” _

When Harry asked, _ “Because they’ll love me?” _

Harry wanted a soulmate, and he resigned himself a very long time ago to the fact that he didn’t have one—not really. He came to terms with the fact that he will never be loved as two souls love one another when they’re fated. He ground this into his head from the moment he realized it, because he wouldn’t allow himself to be disappointed. He knew who he was tied to. He knew what he should be expecting.

He was right. He was enslaved and starving and losing sanity, but this was safe. Harry knew who he was and where he fit there. He was a prisoner; a life-insurance policy for the Dark Lord. He was a prisoner who would at some point overpower his captor. He was a prisoner with a death sentence that had been hanging over his head for five years. He knew who he was.

Then Voldemort touched him.

And suddenly Harry knew nothing at all.

Harry doesn’t have a soulmate; he has a death sentence and ill-fate. Harry wasn’t supposed to feel _ anything _, but when Voldemort touched him he felt everything. Everything. The entirety of space opened up in the shallow gap between their bodies. Something endless in their breath.

Harry thought it was a dream. He thought it was a phantom his mind was making up, a fantasy of what he’d always wanted—a soulmate, the real kind. He thought it was a dream because it was exactly what Harry _ had _ been dreaming of for a third of his life. Different faces and different bodies, but always the same. Voldemort touched him and it was everything he’d ever wanted, and it was a dream, it wasn't real; that’s why he was allowed to feel it. Except it was real. It was excruciatingly brief, but when Voldemort touched him Harry knew how it must feel to have a soulmate. 

Hope is a powerful thing, and Harry knows this better than anyone. More than that, Harry has always known to pick and choose what he hopes for. Hope for the right thing and it can save your life and others; hope for the wrong thing and it will destroy you. The concept of soulmates, for Harry, has always been the latter.

Voldemort touched him, and disgustingly, against all of Harry’s wishes, he forgot. Voldemort made him forget.

Now if he would just quit reminding him of it.

Harry doesn’t know what Voldemort saw or felt, just that when his eyes open Voldemort looks stricken, an expression on his face that threatens to peel Harry apart from the inside out, and he will not let it, he will not let it, he will not let it.

“You deserve worse,” he says, and his voice sounds strange to his own ears. “You deserve to feel every bit of what I did to the extent that I did. _ You _deserve to be the one writhing on the floor, to finally feel the pain you’re constantly inflicting upon others.”

His gaze narrows down to a point, trained on Voldemort’s red eyes. He studies them. Reminds himself how serpent-like they are—how inhuman. As if he needs convincing. Perhaps he does. “You deserve to be the one tortured. All of this—all that you have put me through—should be yours.”

Harry thinks he must actually be frightening Voldemort now. There’s a tone in his voice that is distinctly not his. He feels as if someone else is borrowing his tongue—as if the words aren’t his own. He’s never heard himself so cold, but somehow cannot warm himself enough to pull out of it.

“Harry,” Voldemort interjects cautiously.

“Don’t say my name,” he snaps venomously, so Voldemort doesn’t. “You just can’t bear to lose your power over me, can you? You would let Bellatrix take pleasure out of hurting me just for you to prove a point. Did you like that, Voldemort? Did you like watching her drool over me?” Even through the weakening bond he can feel the surge of emotion rear its head. He would smile if he could smile. If he could feel anything.

“I’m done hurting you,” Voldemort says, and there’s real fear in his tone. If not _ of _ Harry, _ for _Harry.

“Oh, _ now _you are? How fortunate I am that you’ve finally made up your mind.”

“I’m done now, I swear on it.” His tone is slow and deceptively gentle, as if he’s trying not to spook a wild animal. “It’s over.”

“I DON’T WANT YOUR KINDNESS!” Harry’s scream echoes across the room, off the mural above him and the gold trimmed walls. His voice cracks near the end, still weak from the screaming just prior. Voldemort takes a physical step backward. 

He breathes heavily for a few seconds, bringing himself back in, trying to fit what’s left of him inside what’s left of his body. “I don’t want your kindness,” he repeats quietly, although the words are clear. “You will carry on torturing me or you will stay far away from me. Can that be arranged?”

Nothing in Harry’s voice sounds human. Nothing within him _ feels _human. 

Voldemort’s stare has returned to an unreadable, impassive thing, but it’s locked far too tightly on Harry’s to be unconcerned.

“Yes,” he says finally. “It can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	11. Sky

Harry hasn’t seen Voldemort in a long time. When handed the ultimatum to continue torturing Harry or stay away, he chose the latter, and Harry doesn’t know which is more cruel.

He feels like an addict coming off a substance. His skin itches and prickles and his stomach seems intent on turning itself inside out and back again multiple times a day. He’s restless and jittery and shaky like he’s going through withdrawals, which, Harry thinks, he probably is. He hasn’t been able to sleep much. Although admittedly unpleasant, this is nothing like before. There’s no dwindling sanity or slipping toward death. This is just a persistent irritation. 

The thing about detoxing is that it has a definite end. Eventually it will work its way out of your system and your body will get on with it, learn to function again without it; Harry has no such luxury. There’s no coming off of Voldemort. There’s no way to sweat him out of Harry’s system, to scrub him off his skin. Unless he finds a way to spit his own soul out of his mouth, it seems this will go on forever. 

Harry is lost within it all. He can’t live without Voldemort being alive and he can hardly be alive without Voldemort in close quarters. This mark is a chain and this distance a noose; Voldemort’s life the chair that can be kicked out from under him. 

Harry can’t stop thinking about Voldemort’s body pressed against him in the ballroom. He can’t stop thinking about the feeling of _ warm warm warm_. His head runs on loop, circling between the feeling of his soulmate’s chest against his own back, the sound of his _ hum _ right beside Harry’s ear and the rumbling of his chest; the whisper of Harry’s name, the warning in his voice, the shudder down Harry’s spine. He’s thinking about the crushing wave of pure, unbridled _ possession_, of Voldemort’s fury when Bellatrix called Harry beautiful when he screams; the real fear in his eyes while Harry lost himself.

Harry thinks about Voldemort. He thinks about soulmates. He thinks about the fact that he’ll most likely need to stay with him until one of them dies. He thinks about whether he wants to stay with him like this—in this state of indecision. In this state of conflict.

He calls himself insane. There’s no other way to live with Voldemort as a soulmate. There’s no other way to handle this. It isn’t as if Harry can love him, and the idea that they’d be able to make amends, shake hands, _ it’s in the past now, let’s forget about it, _move on—it’s preposterous. Forgiveness… it isn’t impossible.

Still, Harry is thinking about Voldemort’s breath fanning the nape of his neck.

He’s thinking, _ this is how a soulmate is supposed to feel. No burning in his chest or itch to break, no urge to harm or run or escape. Just this. _

What is ‘this’? 

Harry thinks for a long time, comes up with a dozen synonyms, scours his limited vocabulary, wishes Hermione were here to help him think of something, _ anything, _any alternative, but there’s only one word he can find to properly encompass this, all that it is:

Longing.

This is longing.

———

Harry does, as he warned himself at the time, regret it later. 

He regrets allowing himself to lean back into Voldemort’s chest at the appearance of Lucius and Bellatrix. He regrets thinking to himself, _ It’s too late now. No need to fight what makes this easier. _He regrets letting himself take shelter in the brief few moments, because now those few moments are all Harry can think about. 

Not the torture; not the screaming; not the cruelty. Although if he focuses very hard he _ can _manage to muster up some fury, it’s not without effort. The piece of Harry's soul connected to the piece of Voldemort’s is intent on honing in only on those few seconds, on that brief feeling, on that overwhelming release. 

His soul is working against him. 

The prat.

Harry has been trying very hard to stew, but _ trying _to stew more or less invalidates the action altogether, and anyway, it’s hard to stew now that he’s being pampered. 

He is. Being pampered. The whiplash has the potential to snap necks.

If you ignore the fact that Harry has been taken from his friends, isolated from the world, is most likely thought to be dead, and is, of course, irreversibly attached to the most sadistic wizard alive, Harry is living quite well. No matter that he’s trying desperately _ not _to forget the fact. Pampering be damned.

He forgets anyway.

Damn it all.

Harry has been given a bedroom. He’s been allowed to shower for the first time in, what, months? He has a mattress. Clothes. Honestly, what a liar Voldemort had been. He asked for cruelty or nothing at all, and Voldemort gave him luxury as if trying to make it up to Harry, and gods, Harry could kill him. He could curse him for all these conflicting signals. He could destroy him just for the trouble.

Harry hates him, god dammit. His soul is willing to latch on to anything it possibly can, to drain it for all its worth, to use it as a weapon. Against Harry. Against all reason. His sudden kindness is a gun to Harry’s temple forcing him to his knees, saying, _ Look at him. Look at what he’s done for you. Look at what he’s given. _

Despite all of his arguments, his back-talking, his outrage, _ Look at all he’s taken, look at what I’ve lost, look at what he’s done to me, _he’s silenced. Harry hates him. He hates him both for what he’s done and what he’s doing.

He asked him to be cruel.

His only hope is that the after-effects of the bond’s kickstart will begin to fade. That’s what all of this is, after all. This is the same as the feeling of Voldemort’s emotions hitting Harry like his own, or the relaxation in his touch. This is the bond, holding, holding, holding. Souls aren’t meant to be torn and they aren’t meant to be denied. Harry and Voldemort are fighting fate itself, fighting the only thing that the wizarding world has ever been sure of. Harry and Voldemort have never _ not _been fighting.

Harry thinks, _ So keep fighting me, dammit. _

Voldemort doesn’t fight him. Voldemort doesn’t even show up. Nagini does, and Harry has never been more grateful for Salazar Slytherin. Nagini takes the edge off.

Then there’s Pipkey, one of Malfoy’s many house-elves, and the one that’s been chosen to care for Harry. Pipkey is quite kind—mellower than Dobby and nowhere near as bitter as Kreacher. Harry can’t tell if she knows anything about Harry’s situation or why she’s being asked to care for him. Surely after years of living with the Malfoy’s she must have at least _ heard _of Harry, which can’t have been anything good, but she gives no signs to suggest whether she has more information than the orders she was given.

Whatever her views on Harry, she is always kind, and Harry is glad for the company. Aside from the overgrown snake and Pipkey, he’s alone.

Two weeks of reading and incapacitating boredom pass by, two weeks in which Harry is fed three times a day, even when he doesn’t want to be. Two weeks of showers and soap and no magic. Harry misses magic like he misses oxygen. He misses magic like a hollow space where a heart should be. 

Two weeks.

Then Pipkey informs Harry that it’s nearly Christmas, and a few days later Draco comes home.

Of all the people Harry thought he might run into eventually, Draco is the one that he completely overlooked—Godric knows why. So when Pipkey appears in Harry’s room with a startling _ crack _to inform him that ‘Master Draco’ will be coming to see him soon, Harry supposes he must be dreaming. Surely, of anyone who might show up in his bedroom the junior Malfoy would be one of the last. Harry has barely stood up, barely had time to run a frantic hand through his hair, when Draco appears in his doorway. His tall, narrow form takes Harry aback momentarily, standing in the spot that Voldemort did two weeks ago, the last time Harry saw him. This is no Dark Lord; this is Draco Malfoy nothing like Harry has ever known him. He looks tired and sick, his usually fair skin turned grey. To think this is the same boy who stood in front of Harry a year ago, smiling nastily at him from beside Dolores Umbridge. To think a year did this to him, put this weight on his shoulders, aged him years… 

“Bloody hell,” Harry says, “what happened to you?” 

If he’d been given more time he might have found better words to say to Malfoy six months after Harry disappeared off the face of the Earth. If he’d been given time to prepare himself for that pointed face perhaps he would have been able to smother the astonishment.

“What happened to me?” Malfoy laughs. There’s still a certain antagonism in his voice—Harry would have been concerned if there wasn’t—but his words don’t come out scathing; he just sounds in utter disbelief. “You were dead.”

“Oh, was I?”

Malfoy sneers a bit. It lacks vigour. “Don’t be smart. That’s what the entire wizarding world thought.” Harry doesn’t know what to say to that. Or any of this. He doesn’t know what to say to him. “Thinks,” Malfoy corrects belatedly, as if it needs to be said. Harry didn’t exactly think Voldemort had sent out an owl.

“What are you even _ doing _here?”

“Back for hols,” Malfoy sniffs. “Supposed to be a vacation, isn’t it? Imagine coming home for Christmas to find Harry bloody Potter in your house.” It sounds like it’s meant to come a bite but gets softened on the way out. “Disapparates in chains with the Dark Lord, falls off of the face of the planet for months, all of the sudden the Lord has gone missing too, hardly communicating at all. Death Eaters are scrambling, people are dying left and right, war is starting, and both the Chosen One and the Dark Lord have mysteriously vanished. Then here I am, home for Christmas to find Potter all cozied up in a guest room with my house elf waiting on him.”

“And you’re upset by this?”

“Oh, yes. Absolutely devastated. I thought I’d have the Dark Lord all to myself on boxing day.”

Harry glares. “Believe it or not, Malfoy, this isn’t my ideal holiday either.”

“I’d imagine not,” he snips. “Bit too lavish for your taste, isn’t it?”

He sounds like he’s picking fights out of habit more than anything; there’s no heat behind it, no real feeling. Harry understands it, in a way. Fighting is what Harry and Draco know how to do. Fighting is familiar. Harry is being mourned and Draco looks like he’s dying and Harry’s been imprisoned in Draco Malfoy’s guest room with a giant snake and a house elf. Fighting is a groove to settle into. Fighting feels right.

Still.

“I’m being held captive by the Dark Lord in your home and you’ve still managed to find a way to bicker about wealth?”

“Held captive is a strong word,” Malfoy dismisses. “Look at you. You’ve been locked in a comfortable room in Malfoy Manor. Boo hoo.”

“Right. It’s been like a sixth month vacation,” Harry says sarcastically, trying not to get worked up. He _ is _in Malfoy’s house, after all, and he is without a wand. 

Involuntarily, on impulse entirely, Harry’s eyes flick down to his wrists. Malfoy, the nosy git, follows his gaze. Harry’s mark is covered, of course, but the sleeves have ridden up far enough to expose the ugly scars around Harry’s wrists where the binding cut halfway to bone. They never healed—no one saw to them quick enough. Well, no one saw to them at all.

Malfoy’s nose wrinkles in distaste. Harry figures there must be some human emotion hidden within it, but it’s more a hope than anything. “Very well,” he mutters. “I apologize. Old habits die hard, I suppose.” He steps forward and offers out a hand.

Harry looks at Malfoy’s knobbly, pale fingers and sees the soft hands of an eleven year-old boy being offered just outside the Great Hall. He sees Malfoy smiling at Harry, cunning but genuine, waiting for their hands to clasp together, surely not doubting for even a moment that Harry would accept. He was Draco Malfoy, after all. He had everything.

Now, Malfoy just looks tired. He looks hollow in a way that surpasses his physical appearance. He doesn’t look sure of anything at all. 

Harry takes his hand. It is the only thing to do.

“Draco Malfoy,” he introduces himself, and Harry thinks there could be a smile there, barely, if he were to look for it.

“Harry Potter,” he responds. He doesn’t smile, either, but he thinks he could if he tried.

———

Malfoy leaves. Then he comes back.

And comes back. And comes back. Harry can’t get rid of him.

He even _ tells _him. “I don’t need your company, Malfoy, for Merlin’s sake. Just get on with your holiday.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What are you expecting me to do?”

“I don’t know, what do you usually do over holidays?”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Keep to myself and try to live through all the parties, which haven’t been happening as of late. My mother doesn’t exactly have the time to brush up on her hostessing skills.”

“So you’re doing… what, exactly?”

“Schoolwork. Seeing you. I’ve gone to meet Blaise once or twice—that’s the extent of it.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Get over yourself, Potter. Quit pretending you don’t enjoy having me around.”

The odd thing is, Harry kind of does.

Something has happened to Malfoy in the past year. He seems hollowed out, as if all the nasty bits of him were carved out, leaving something in their place. Not kindness—not nearly—but something more human than he’s ever seen. Although they still spend a vast majority of their time bickering Malfoy hasn’t threatened to jinx him and Harry hasn’t threatened to plant a fist in his eye. Not that Malfoy ever has a wand with him—if it were that easy Harry would have strolled out the front doors of the manor by now.

Draco Malfoy surely isn’t Harry’s preferred company, but he’s company, and more than all of that, he’s been living in the world Harry hasn’t for the past six months.

“The wizarding world is all but ending out there,” Malfoy says the second time he visits Harry, leaning against the wall beside Harry’s bathroom door. “Frankly, I envy you for missing it.”

“I promise that you don’t envy me, Malfoy.” At some point, maybe, he’ll get around to telling Malfoy all that happened to him.

“Whatever. Point is, everything’s falling apart and we’ve already kicked the rock that triggers the landslide.”

“What- what’s happening?” Harry asks, and he truly dreads the answer. “What have I missed?”

“What haven’t you? Wizards are going missing left and right, we’re wiping out muggle structures, Fudge got kicked out of office, dementors are all over—it’s chaos. People are terrified.”

“And you?” Harry asks.

“What?”

“Are you terrified?”

Malfoy’s mouth turns down. “Of course not.”

_ Of course not. _“How are things… on my side?”

“You all are… handling yourselves.” Harry doesn’t know if the vague response is Malfoy acting on orders to keep Harry in the dark or if he just doesn’t want to say. Harry stares. Pleads without saying a word. Malfoy huffs out a breath but relents. “Nobody has died. Not that I know of, anyway.”

Harry lets out a heavy breath of relief. “And your side?”

“We’re handling ourselves as well.”

“This conversation has been wholly unconvincing.”

Malfoy runs a tired hand through his hair. “Honestly, Potter, everyone is waiting for the scales to tip one way or the other.”

“That’s- _ why_? A stalemate? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Malfoy slides to the floor—apparently exhausted by their conversation. “It makes a world of sense. The Golden Boy hasn’t been there to save the Order and the Dark Lord hasn’t been here to save the Death Eaters. No one’s even sure what we’re fighting against anymore. Everyone is just… throwing out hits where they can reach.”

“What do you mean the Dark Lord hasn’t been here?”

Malfoy looks at Harry incredulously for a moment. “Surely you know.”

“Know _ what_?”

“He’s been with _ you_, you twit. All this time we thought you were dead and the Dark Lord was off working with dark creatures or recruiting Death Eaters, and the entire time he was dealing with the Boy Who Lived.”

“He wasn’t- it isn’t like we were _ shacking up_, Malfoy. The only time I saw him was when he got bored enough to hit me with a _ cruciatus_.” _ Or when I cried in his arms, or when he came and sat in my room to witness me lose my sanity, or when he hovered by my bedside like a war-wife_—but Harry doesn’t need to mention any of that.

“Well, he sure as shit wasn’t with us. Maybe a bit in the beginning, then a bit a few weeks ago, but they were brief and rare and entirely unproductive. It’s ludicrous—even kidnapped you’re staving off the wizarding war.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well you wouldn’t, would you?” Harry just looks at him. “When do you ever?”

Malfoy leaves. Sometime later Nagini is back, pushing her way through the door that Harry can’t even get near enough to touch and letting it fall shut behind her. She comes beside Harry where he’s curled up at the head of his bed and coils into herself, draping the top length of her body across his lap. Harry strokes a hand absentmindedly across her scales—because he gets to do that now, apparently—just for the texture of them. She’s soothing, and the feel of her underneath his fingers even more so.

“_Hi there, _ ” he murmurs, then asks, despite knowing he shouldn’t, “_any word from the big guy? _” because this radio silence is getting to him. Because his absence is unbelievably irritating.

“_N__one for you, _” she snarks. Nagini has quite an attitude, considering that she’s a snake, but what else can be expected. She is, after all, the Dark Lord’s only companion.

Well, maybe not _ only. _

No matter.

“_Alright, _ ” he says exasperatedly, “_I’ve got it. _”

“_Any word for him? _”

Harry scoffs. “_Obviously not. _” Sending messages through Nagini like a schoolboy with a crush is one low that Harry absolutely will not stoop to.

“_Then kindly shut up about it, won’t you? _” Then Nagini closes her eyes, point apparently proven.

———

“You’re _ kidding, _” Harry asks in disbelief on the third day of Malfoy’s visits.

“Am I laughing, Potter?”

“The _ Falmouth Falcons_?”

“Yes, the Falmouth Falcons,” Malfoy sniffs. “What of it?”

“It just seems so unlike a Malfoy to support losers,” Harry shrugs, struggling to keep the grin off his face.

“Take that back,” Malfoy snaps. “As if you’d know anything.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means you grew up watching muggle sports, obviously.”

Harry rolls his eyes, sinking back onto his bed sheets. “Name one time you beat me to a snitch,” he says to the ceiling, then smirks at Malfoy’s lack of an immediate answer.

“Fine, what’s your team, then?”

“The Chudley Cannons, ‘course.”

“The _ Cannons_,” Malfoy says incredulously. “You support the _ Cannons _and think you have the right to gloat over my team being the Falcons?”

“It would appear that way.”

“Ridiculous,” Malfoy huffs. “Absolutely ludicrous.”

Harry smirks. “Still haven’t beat me to a snitch, have you?”

They argue back and forth for awhile, Malfoy insisting that he was never given a fair shot and Harry asking him to _ Please, explain to me how the multiple school quidditch matches weren’t fair enough for you. _

Harry takes a nap after Malfoy leaves because there’s only so much reading a boy can do before his brain starts to drip out of his ears. He dreams about the Chudley Cannons. It’s quite pleasant, but in the dream Ron is beside him and Harry still wakes up crying.

———

The next time Malfoy comes to Harry’s room he asks the question he dreads to ask.

“How are they?” Malfoy doesn’t need to request clarification.

“They’re… decent. Closer than ever, but distant from the rest of the world. Detached. I don’t think anyone’s been able to reach them in a long time.”

“Do they seem happy?”

“Potter,” Malfoy says shortly, but there’s a sort of pity in his voice, in his gaze, “their best friend died six months ago.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“How many people know that?”

Harry doesn’t say anything for awhile. “Do you count Pipkey?”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “We’ve all spent six months mourning, not just you, but what you mean. You were a sort of liferaft for the light side, like they refused to lose hope if you were alive—now you’re not. Your friends are mourning you, yeah, and the Hogwarts students and teachers, and anyone else who’s ever gotten to shake your hand, but the rest of Britain isn’t weeping over _ you_, they’re weeping over their future. That’s what you were. You were their future.”

Harry thinks about his mark. He thinks about spending five years knowing he was a fraud and that the symbol Britain had made him out to be was fabricated. He thinks about believing that his entire life was a lie. “Sorry to disappoint you all,” he mutters.

“Don’t apologize to me,” Malfoy remarks. “I was just fine.”

“Really? You seemed dangerously close to giving a damn, coming into this room for the first time.”

“_You _seem dangerously close to delusional.” 

Harry shrugs and lets it drop. Draco Malfoy’s pride is a dangerous thing to play with. “They’re taking care of each other, though?”

“Yeah,” Malfoy nods. “All of your people are.”

_ Your people. _The phrase sticks in Harry’s head and stays there. Harry knocks his head back against the wall. He and Malfoy are leaned against the same one, a foot between their bodies.

“I miss them,” he sighs, more to himself than Malfoy. He responds anyway.

“I know,” he murmurs, and Harry can’t quite decipher his tone. “I know you do.”

———

On Malfoy’s fifth visit he tells Harry about the marriage.

“An arranged marriage? I thought those stopped being a thing in, I dunno, the 1800s or something.”

Malfoy looks at him in a sort of condescending astonishment. “Merlin, Potter, brush up on your history—and no, arranged marriages are standard in pureblood families.”

“You really do treat yourselves like royalty, don’t you?”

“We’re wizarding royalty, anyway. My parents were arranged.”

Harry blinks. “I always thought they were soulmates.”

“They’re as close to soulmates as they can be without having each other’s marks on their arm, anyway. If either of them had found their soulmate arrangements would be changed. That’s how we think—alone until proven otherwise.”

“Well,” Harry allows, “that does make sense.”

Draco looks at him funny. “What does that mean?”

“They kind of look perfect together don’t they? There’s no way a match like that was natural.”

Malfoy let’s out an undignified snort. “Yeah, I suppose.”

Harry cracks a smile too before sobering. “Do they love each other?”

Malfoy shrugs, looking a tad bit uncomfortable. “They’d have to learn eventually, wouldn’t they? They’re stuck together forever—pureblood families don’t separate—and if they haven’t met their soulmates by now it’s unlikely they ever will.”

Harry furrows his eyebrows. “It’s that simple? You just learn to love a person?”

Malfoy shrugs. “More or less. If you don’t, you fake it. There’s not much else to do about it. Everyone who’s arranged knows it won’t be the same as a soulmate.”

“Are your parents faking it?”

“No,” Malfoy says, shaking his head, “I don’t think so. I can only hope I get that kind of luck.”

“Well,” Harry says tentatively, “Astoria _ is _quite pretty, isn’t she?”

Malfoy’s head turns towards Harry, a startled laugh escaping his throat that seems to take even him by surprise. “_Really? _” he asks in amused disbelief, presumably referring to Harry’s lame attempt at civility. Harry laughs too. 

“Well, I tried.” He claps Malfoy on the shoulder and the boy doesn’t flinch, or even look uncomfortable at the touch. His shrug out of Harry’s grip is more playful than anything. “That’s some shite, innit?”

“Yeah,” Malfoy snorts. “It is.”

He leans his head back against the headboard across from where Harry sits at the foot, where he settled tentatively upon his entrance, leaving a wide berth. Got sick of sitting on the floor, Harry supposes. He mirrors Malfoy, settling into a companionable silence.

_ Do they love each other? _

_ They'd have to learn eventually, wouldn’t they? _

———

The sixth time Malfoy comes to Harry’s room he says, “Come on.”

When Harry says, “What?” Malfoy holds out his hand. Harry doesn’t take it. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You keep going on about beating me to the snitch, don’t you? Let’s see how you do.”

“You’re kidding,” Harry breathes.

“Not kidding,” Malfoy sighs. “Quit whining before I change my mind.”

This is a joke. This must be a joke. “You’re _ kidding._”

“Potter,” Malfoy snaps. “When was the last time you went outside?”

Harry pauses. “Er- flying to the Department of Mysteries.”

“As I thought. So get moving.”

Harry looks at him in a daze. There’s no way.

“Is this- is this allowed?”

Malfoy pulls Harry up from the bed when he finally takes his hand. Malfoy’s palms are soft. “Of course it is. We’re not chummy enough for me to die for you yet, Potter.”

“So you were given permission?”

“Ordered, more like.”

“Ordered by who?”

“Merlin, Potter. The Dark Lord—who else?”

“He- _ what?_”

“Are you dim? You really thought I was coming to see the Dark Lord’s prize without his express permission?”

“You were being _ forced?_” Harry’s brain is working overtime to digest this information, not even bothering to be grossed out by ‘The Dark Lord’s prize’. 

“Well, he doesn’t exactly have a wand to my head. Maybe the first time, but I’ve actually come to somewhat enjoy,” his mouth turns down into a sneer at the word, as if admitting to any sense of camaraderie with Harry is unappealing, “your company.”

“Right,” Harry says slowly. Malfoy raises his eyebrows at Harry’s tone. “Well,” he says calmly, “I’m going to kill him.”

Malfoy widens his eyes, looking thoroughly shocked and more than a little worried. “You don’t get to _ say that,_” he hisses.

“I get to say whatever I want,” Harry snaps, “and I’m not going outside.” He sits back down on his bed with a huff, crossing his arms. Maybe he’s being childish, the reasonable part of his brain admits. The rest of him is disproportionately angry.

“You’re coming outside,” Malfoy says shortly, no room for argument in his voice. 

“I don’t take orders from you,” Harry says, crossing his legs as if to further his point.

“Well _ I _take orders from the Dark Lord, and unless you want my head on the line, you’re walking out the back doors with me, taking a broom, and playing some bloody quidditch.”

It isn’t the threat in Malfoy’s voice that gets Harry, or the wish of Voldemort, or even his own ache to breathe fresh air—because his pride is much stronger than that. What pushes Harry is the undertone of fear in Malfoy’s voice. As much as he claims the Dark Lord doesn’t have a wand to his head, he surely has something; Malfoy is terrified.

Harry will admit it—he cares. At least a little.

He sighs resignedly, then asks, “Any new models while I’ve been out of commission?” Malfoy cracks a relieved smile. 

“Nothing you could afford, Potter.” Harry smiles back.

He follows Malfoy through the manor, taking a path so winding with such a ludicrous amount of turns that he couldn’t hope to retrace it.

When Harry steps outside he sobs. It’s a dry thing, tearing its way out of his throat without either warning or permission, shocking him despite it being a perfectly rational response. That’s what he repeats to himself—_a perfectly rational response_—to spare his pride as Malfoy watches Harry fall to pieces.

The sun reflecting off the snow burns Harry’s eyes but he can’t bring himself to close them. Not when he can see untouched _ snow _ on the ground and white-tipped trees scattered around the property and a pond—bordering on a lake, really—in the distance, completely frozen over. Of course Malfoy has a bloody lake on his property. Of course he does.

Harry wonders if he would let him ice skate on it.

Harry can’t recall a time when he’s ever seriously considered hugging a tree, but he does now. He considers rubbing his face into the bark and his fingers in the sap and keeping them sticky just as proof—_there is a world outside of fifteen by fifteen rooms. There is a world outside of Voldemort. _He wants to fall to the snow and kiss the ground. He wants to roll in it, experience it like a toddler’s first winter, let his hair freeze stiff as his cheeks go rosy.

So Harry lets the light burn right through his corneas. Harry keeps his eyes open against the sting because he doesn’t want to miss a moment of this, this, the sun despite the snow and the clear sky and _ air, _when was the last time Harry tasted fresh air? It feels like years, decades. Harry wants to drink the biting oxygen down like water.

He thinks Malfoy has turned away, to give him space out of respect or due to discomfort Harry doesn’t know. The latter, probably, but it’s become more difficult to tell with him.

_ Did Voldemort actually put Malfoy up to this? _

Then Harry banishes the thought as quickly as it comes. None of Voldemort’s darkness can live here. It’s too bright. Harry smiles upward, marveling that the sun is out in December and the numbing of the tip of his nose.

Harry says, “I want to make a snow angel,” looking over at Malfoy with wide eyes.

He wrinkles his nose. “Not sure why you’re looking at me, Potter. If you want to make a snow angel go right on ahead.” Harry smiles sweetly and Malfoy glares in warning. “Absolutely not.”

“Just one,” Harry insists.

“None. I’m not a child.”

“You don’t need to be a child to make a snow angel.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Humour me?” Harry asks hopefully, widening his eyes a bit, and damn, he really hopes that works.

Malfoy bites his lip, looking thoroughly conflicted for one second, two seconds, three—then nods reluctantly. Harry grins, feeling like bubbling over. He feels like he’s going to melt in the most pleasant way. He feels like flying, which they _ will _do, he reminds himself gleefully, spying the two brooms propped against the wall of the manor. Harry’s going to make like Aunt Marge and float away. He feels light enough to drift right off.

Harry’s first step into the snow feels like a dream. It’s powder—there’s no crunch, just the unmistakable and irreplicable sound of soft snow being compressed beneath your feet. Harry laughs gleefully, not even caring how unbelievably ridiculous he must sound in Malfoy’s ears. He can’t help but imagine what Hogwarts would look like were he there right now. He pushes back the dull ache the moment he’s felt it. Not here.

“Malfoy,” he says, “come here.”

“I don’t-”

“Come here!” Harry laughs, glancing at him once, meeting his eyes briefly. Whatever inhibitions Malfoy was harbouring seem to soften in his eyes when he sees Harry. He can imagine what he looks like now—cheeks flushed, nose rosy, eyes lit up. What a world. What a world Harry has been missing.

Malfoy huffs out a breath that sounds more irritated than he looks, with one corner of his mouth twitching up. “I cannot believe I’m doing this,” he mutters, trudging out to Harry.

Harry turns to him, hands shaking in his borrowed mittens for reasons unrelated to the cold. “Please tell me you’ve made a snow angel.”

“Of course I’ve made a snow angel, Potter. For Merlin’s sake.”

Harry beams, takes a few steps forward, turns around, and flops back directly into the snow. He barely feels the cold that spills into the back of his cloak and melts against the heat of his neck. “Draco!” he shouts, unwilling to take his eyes off the sky. “Get your arse over here before I drag you!” A huff. Footsteps. Then Draco Malfoy is lying down on the ground beside him, arriving there much more gracefully than Harry had.

“Don’t call me Draco,” he sniffs. “It’s weird.”

“Bugger off. Start making angels.” 

By the time Harry allows them to stop, damp with snow and flushed with the cold, smiling, they must have made more than a dozen accumulative snow angels. Malfoy, for his part, only complained through the first four. After that he almost seemed amused. Harry stands with his hands on his hips, surveying his work, while Malfoy sits on the ground beside him in the midst of his last angel, breathing heavily. Harry glances at him. “Really, you’d think you were the one who hasn’t moved in six months.”

“Shut it,” he retorts weakly. Harry laughs easily, the thing rolling out of his throat without thought, and he can’t recall the last time he laughed without thinking about it. Malfoy laughs back. Like it’s simple.

“Draco,” Harry says.

“Malfoy,” he corrects.

“_Draco_,” Harry repeats, and the blonde glares. “Did you ever play in the snow? As a kid, I mean.”

“Sometimes,” Malfoy says a little stiffly, eyeing Harry warily as he circles behind him, feigning his way back to sit on the dry tile nearer the manor. When the boy turns back around Harry crouches down cautiously.

“Sometimes?”

Harry stands and makes his way back over, hands held behind his back, to see Malfoy’s eyebrows scrunched up. It’s oddly adorable. “I’m a pureblood heir, Potter. They didn’t exactly take us sledding on Saturdays.”

“You’ve never been sledding?”

“Obviously not,” he sneers.

“Never built a snowman?”

“Never.”

“What about snowball fights?”

“How uncivilized,” Malfoy sniffs.

“You really believe that you can beat me to a snitch,” Harry says, backing up a few paces, “when you can’t even handle me in a snowball fight?”

“Who said I can’t handle you in a snowball fight?”

Harry quirks his eyebrows and watches as Malfoy struggles up to standing quickly, looking alarmed. “I swear to everything you hold dear, Potter,” he threatens, “if you so much as twitch in my direction—”

He’s interrupted by the snowball that catches him in the chest. Harry was aiming for his head, actually, but this will do just as well. Malfoy isn’t coherent enough to do anything but splutter for a moment before his eyes snap to Harry’s. Harry gulps even as he’s already scraping together another pile of snow.

“That’s the last thing you’re ever going to do, Potter.”

Harry should be taking this seriously—he has his own pride to honor now, and Malfoy does seem properly pissed—but he can’t, really. He’s outside and his cloak is damp from rolling around in the snow and his hair is wet at the ends. The sky is miraculously blue above them. Sure, he’s surrounded by wards, undoubtedly, and sure, he’s really not any more or less trapped than he was before, but here’s a wider space for him to be held captive in. Here’s the illusion of some sort of freedom. Here’s the sun.

Harry can’t help it—he beams. Moments later he’s ducking to avoid the snowball hurtling toward his face, but he laughs anyway. Then he’s ducking behind a maple tree and scraping snow together frantically even though he can feel his fingers numbing out, and he’s breathing, breathing, breathing.

Gods, what a feeling. What a feeling, feeling alive. 

———

Harry and Draco don’t end up flying.

They end up sprawled beside each other in the snow, both covered in chips of ice and shivering. Laughing breathlessly. Finding themselves in the limbo between 'two boys that once loathed each other' and 'two boys that could maybe, possibly, be something close to friends', but not discussing it.

They end up inside, pulled into a drawing room beside a fire, dressed in warm robes and draped in two blankets that Pipkey brought them, along with two steaming mugs of tea. Harry’s thinking, _ Surely it must be more difficult than this. _ Surely it must be more difficult to turn one of the people you loathed above anyone else into something akin to a friend. 

It isn’t, though. Somehow it isn’t difficult at all.

———

“Draco,” the Dark Lord says, calling forward the Malfoy heir.

The boy steps forward, pale and looking wary but not frightened as he might have been a few weeks ago, as his father might be, as anyone might. The boy has a lack of fear based purely on growing jaded to the terror.

Draco Malfoy has been looking into the Dark Lord’s eyes for months, and, for the last week, every day.

“My Lord,” he murmurs, bowing his head at the imposing figure before him. Barely in his line of sight he sees the Lord’s hand gesture vaguely, giving permission to raise his head. “I took him outside, as you requested.”

The Dark Lord’s low hum seems to echo in the cavernous room. Draco Malfoy swallows. “Look at me.”

Draco meets his eyes.

Then there are memories being torn from him and directly into the Dark Lord’s mind. Harry Potter wide-eyed and choked and in shock standing in the doorway of the Malfoy’s grounds. Harry Potter laughing gleefully, maybe without realizing it, looking at the sky, then the ground, then the pond a few hundred feet away, then the trees, the snow, the sky, the sky, the sky. Harry Potter close to tears as Draco turns away.

The Dark Lord watches Harry insisting Draco lie beside him to make snow angels then not letting him stop until every bit of ground within a fifteen feet of them in any direction was marked by angel wings. He watches Harry sigh, head tilted upward. Taunting: “You really believe you can beat me to a snitch when you can’t even handle me in a snowball fight?” Sees the absolute glow of Harry’s face as he darts back and forth through the snow, ducking the balls of ice headed toward him and laughing as he shoots back.

He watched Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy lay beside each other in the snow smiling and breathing heavily.

He tears himself from the young Malfoy’s mind violently enough to make the boy stumble. “Leave,” he says, voice cutting to the bone. 

Draco steps backward. “My Lord?”

“Leave,” the Dark Lord says again, but this time his voice thunders, loud enough for Draco to think he might tear the walls down. Loud enough for him to think the ceiling might crumble. His magic lashes out like a whip, filling up the room. Draco stumbles a few feet back then does what no wise man ever does—he turns his back to the Dark Lord and runs.

Lucius Malfoy isn’t far from the room. Draco stops only when his father stands in alarm, blocking his path. “Draco?” he asks in a hushed voice, frantic even in its effort not to be.

“He’s angry,” Draco says numbly. 

Lucius Malfoy is seized by a primal fear, the fear of a man lined up for execution. “What did you do?” he asks. When Draco doesn’t immediately answer he grabs his son by the shoulder, shaking him roughly. “What the hell did you _ do, Draco_?”

“Nothing,” Draco gasps, eyes snapping up to his father’s. “Nothing. I did what he asked.” 

He squeezes his eyes shut, seeing the look on the Dark Lord’s face even in the dark. It’s a fury he’s never seen, and Draco has seen plenty from him, as every one of his followers has. Fury is all the Dark Lord _ is—_fury and hunger—but there’s a certain level of control that he always seems to maintain. He sees those eyes, and there is no control. They’re somehow more feral than Draco has seen them ever before.

“Nothing,” he repeats distantly. “I didn’t do anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	12. Legilimens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has gotten very hectic very fast.  
I hope everyone is staying safe. Stay home when you can, wash your hands and don't touch your face. Take care of yourselves and call your friends. Remember to pay as much mind to your mental health as you do your physical. Sending love and well wishes to everyone.

Draco doesn’t come back for two days and Harry finds himself itching with renewed boredom. It’s almost worse than if he had never come at all—surely worse than if Harry had never been reminded what fresh air tastes like, how snowflakes feel on skin. It’s stuffy in here, too hot when Pipkey lights the fireplace and chilly when she doesn’t, a cold that cuts right to Harry’s marrow. He isn’t sure how much of it is temperature and how much of it is some unnamed thing, something that Harry is too desolate to bother naming. 

Harry never thought he’d see the day that he missed Draco Malfoy, and yet here they are. Harry wants Malfoy to come back. He wants the company.

Nagini’s company never falters. She’s simple—as she’s a snake—but snarky rather than unkind and oddly charming, and always there’s a tug in his chest when she enters and a settling there when she stays. 

She’s been acting abnormally since Malfoy disappeared. She hardly leaves Harry’s side, or his lap, more accurately, as she’s more often draped across him entirely. He’s had to scold her into lying across his legs while he sleeps so as not to restrict his breathing. Any attempts Harry has made to speak with her have been futile, earning either curt answers or none at all, but even so she hovers over him like something precious she’s guarding.

When she leaves Harry tries to sleep to curb the ache of it. It sometimes works.

Nagini soothes the itch, but Harry knows she isn’t what he wants, not really. Nagini is a weak substitute for what Harry’s soul tugs for, pulls and yanks and stabs at his stomach, scrapes against his skin, throws itself against the inside of his skull. He knows what he wants, and he knows he asked for this. He asked and he’ll live with it. He shouldn’t be regretting it.

And yet.

Harry’s entire existence is a long string of ‘and yet’s.

Voldemort has gone. Harry both prays he stays away and prays that he come back. He wonders which is stronger and dreads the answer. He makes do.

On the third day Draco Malfoy reappears in his bedroom. Harry is up from the bed before he knows what he’s doing, with the intentions of what he isn’t sure. He ends up standing in place, looking at Malfoy with wide eyes. The Malfoy heir quirks an eyebrow, amusement playing across his features. “Okay there, Potter?”

“Just fine,” he says a bit dazedly. “You didn’t come back.”

“I’m standing right here.”

“Three days later.”

“It’s been two, Potter, and you lived right through it.”

“Hardly,” he mutters, furrowing his eyebrows. 

Even as he says it he can’t help but think that if anyone looks as if they’d hardly lived through it, it would be Malfoy. Even after the almost-week Harry spent with him he seemed to look a little better—a little happier, a little less grey, a little more than a husk. Maybe Harry had just grown used to it and the three days apart allowed him to see it once more, or maybe whatever kept Malfoy away for three days was enough to hollow him anew.

“Always so ungrateful,” Malfoy sighs, pushing past Harry and sitting down on his bed. He startles when Nagini shifts, opening her eyes. The yellow of them stands out against the bed sheets where the rest of her had been camouflaged against the green silk. “Is it really necessary to keep her here?”

_ “Tell the boy I’ll bite him,” _is Nagini’s very helpful input.

“She says yes,” Harry translates.

Malfoy shoots her a skeptical side-eye as Harry sits beside her, letting the serpent wind herself around Harry’s arm and over his shoulder and only buckling a bit under her weight. “Maybe if you hadn’t stopped visiting she wouldn’t need to be.”

“Shut it.”

“Where’d you go, anyway?”

“Took a break,” Malfoy says, “got sick of you.” Defensive snark only goes so far, and Harry has had a long history of reading Draco Malfoy.

_ Liar. _

Harry doesn’t ask, though. He fears the answer, as he fears most lately.

“Well,” he says instead, reaching up with his spare hand to brush over Nagini’s scaled head. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Malfoy raises his eyebrows derisively—a small step up from a full sneer. “What, did you miss me or something?”

Harry scrunches up his nose. “Or something.” The blond’s lips quirk slightly as if they’re trying not to. “So,” Harry continues cautiously. “Are we…” he lets the sentence trail off.

Malfoy’s jaw tightens. “I’m not taking you outside.”

“That bad, was it?” Harry says lightly, even as his stomach sinks in disappointment.

Malfoy sighs—and Merlin he looks tired. His eyes look sunken, his skin mud-grey where it was once porcelain. Harry wonders how much of his recent benevolence has had to do with actual fondness and how much can be attributed to fatigue. Perhaps Malfoy is just too tired to fight. 

He stands and walks toward the door, gesturing for Harry to follow him. “Let’s get out of this room. I’m bloody sick of looking at it.”

In the sitting room, Pipkey brings them a platter of miniature pastries and tea while they play a game of Wizard’s Chess. Malfoy is—predictably—brilliant, but years of playing against Ron hasn’t left Harry unprepared for this. It’s a fair game, and Malfoy seems impressed by the time they’re nearing the end, if not a smidge bitter.

“Still a sore loser, I see,” Harry says, turning his smile into a smirk with some effort.

“Sore winner,” Malfoy says, taking out Harry’s queen with one move. Harry curses.

“Check,” he says, moving his knight. Malfoy blocks him. Takes out one of Harry’s rooks.

Harry moves a bishop. Malfoy a knight. Harry a pawn.

“Checkmate,” Malfoy grins, and Harry groans.

They play two more games of chess then an entire hour of Exploding Snap (because Malfoy absolutely refused to play Gobstones.) By then Pipkey has brought another platter with lunch and goblets of something red, unfamiliar, and distinctly expensive tasting—Harry is too embarrassed to admit that he doesn’t know in asking.

“Why haven’t we seen your parents?” Harry asks between bites.

Malfoy glances at him, nose endearingly wrinkled. Harry doesn’t bother stopping to marvel at the fact that he’s able to find _ anything _Draco Malfoy does endearing. “Merlin, were you raised by muggles or animals?” Harry shrugs. “Chew and swallow.”

Harry swallows obediently, still looking at Malfoy expectantly. The boy rolls his eyes.

“I’m the only one allowed to see you,” he says.

“Really?”

“Sure. Too much work to Legilimize all of us I suspect.”

“He-” Harry stops so as not to choke. “He’s been watching your memories of me?”

“Do you ever use your head? Of course he has.”

“That’s-” Harry swallows thickly and doesn’t finish. Instead he turns his head to watch the flames flicker in the hearth. After months of captivity Harry finally found solace in a person who wasn’t Voldemort, and it wasn’t even his. This is more of Voldemort moving pawns, playing his game and watching Harry dance on strings. He’d known Malfoy was acting on Voldemort’s orders, but Voldemort _ watching _them, that’s different; it’s unnerving, invasive. 

_ Obsessive. _

He feels very suddenly sick to his stomach.

When he turns his eyes it’s to catch the shadows dancing across Malfoy’s pointed face, all sharp edges and slanted angles, his pointed chin. Harry knows, he swears he knows, that this isn’t Malfoy’s fault. Still, there’s a resentment there, something deep and curdling and sick.

“Every day?” Harry asks.

Malfoy at least has the decency to look guilty. “For the most part, yes.” Harry raises his eyebrows and waits—he’s too bitter to make this easy. Malfoy shifts uncomfortably under the look, then relents. “He hasn’t called for me again—not since the day we went outside. He hasn’t asked to use legilimency, he hasn’t given me any orders; I haven’t even seen him.”

Harry’s stomach flips. “What happened the last time? How did he react?”

“He was _ pissed,_” Malfoy says, and his face pales by a shade, visible even in the dim lighting. “Angry in a way I didn’t recognize. I don’t- I don’t know what I did wrong.” Any anger toward Malfoy that may have reared its head melts at the wobble in his voice, no matter how valiantly he attempts to steady it. He leans to the side subtly enough so as not to drive Malfoy away, and presses their shoulders together. “He’s just leaving me here waiting,” Malfoy continues, “letting me be afraid. That’s why I didn’t come back, you know. When I heard nothing from anyone the last two days I decided not to give him the pleasure.” Here his voice takes on an edge of resentment. “He loves that—the power rush of instilling fear with complete inaction.”

Harry lets Malfoy lean further against him. The poor boy; Harry’s chest aches with his words. He shakes his head, shutting his eyes with a sigh. “This isn’t a power play,” he tells Malfoy.

“What else would it be then?” he questions, his voice something close to desperate. “What other reason could he possibly have to keep me like this. Please, enlighten me. Clearly you know the Dark Lord better than any of us.”

Harry flinches at that. He doesn’t appreciate the truth of it. “He doesn’t want to kill you,” is all he says. Then, _ “Quit that,” _to Nagini as she nips at his ankle. She hisses resentfully but curls herself around his feet, binding his legs together. He glares at her.

“He’s certainly not against it,” Malfoy mutters.

“No,” Harry clarifies, “that’s why he isn’t digging around your mind anymore. He doesn’t want to kill you.”

“Let me know when you plan on saying anything that makes a lick of sense,” Malfoy snaps, losing patience. He drains the rest of his goblet, setting it beside him—graceful even in his irritation—and stands.

“Malfoy, you git,” Harry snaps as the other boy begins to pace. He sends a passing glare in Harry’s direction. “He’ll kill you. He came close, yeah? When he watched us outside? You don’t understand. He- he’s really possessive, or something, I dunno. He didn’t like seeing me happy with you.”

Malfoy looks thoroughly perplexed now and Harry stands, wiggling his feet until Nagini detaches from him reluctantly. She must be picking up on Voldemort. Explains a lot, really.

“I can’t explain to you, but—he doesn’t want to kill you. Seeing me happy with you makes him murderous and for some reason you’re useful enough to spare. The fact that he’s exhibiting enough self-control to keep from looking is remarkable on its own, but if he looked—if he saw again—he would kill you.”

Malfoy swallows and Harry watches his throat shift with it. “I don’t understand,” he says.

“I know.” Nagini returns to Harry’s ankles, sending him wobbling off balance for a moment before straightening.

“You make it sound like he… like he _ likes _you or something.”

Nagini hisses softly in his direction and Malfoy starts. Harry hisses back warningly.

Then Harry repeats, “I know,” because he can think of nothing else.

When Malfoy leads Harry back to his quarters an hour later Harry grabs his wrist before he goes. It’s too thin. “Come back tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“Promise.” Harry can’t help how his voice sounds like a plea.

“I promise,” he nods.

———

Draco Malfoy keeps his promise.

He shakes his head the moment Harry meets his eye standing in the doorway, answering his unspoken question. Even so, he doesn’t take Harry outside. They return to the sitting room, which Harry will still take over his bedroom in an instant. The day passes much as the one before. It’s only further into the night that they slip into something more weighted.

“How bad has it been?”

Harry spends a long time mulling over the question. Longer than he should, surely. There are a lot of things he could tell Malfoy, most of which he could never hope to explain. He could tell Malfoy about bleeding wrists or nightmares or stale bread, or he could tell Malfoy about sleeping for weeks or the feeling of an entire universe opening up within him and all around him and between them with the touch of a finger to his wrist. Harry could tell him about the pull or the itch or the ache, the longing, how it feels to have every atom in Harry’s body reach for every atom of Voldemort’s, the sick addiction to something rotten. 

And what of comfort? What of Harry pressed to his chest, shaking, the _ warm warm warm_? How does Harry explain that between the pain and the torture stands Voldemort at the end of his bed with true fear written across his face, between the cold and the isolation stands Lucius and Bellatrix before him and Voldemort behind him—how does he explain the moment that he deemed Voldemort safer than the two of them? There aren’t words to justify Harry falling back into his chest, giving up; he hasn’t even found the ones to explain to himself. 

_ How bad has it been? _

_ Which part? The hurting or the wanting? _

Harry says, “It still feels like I dreamt most of it.”

Malfoy says, “Why are you alive?”

_ Because my life is tied to his. Because my soul is his soul, his soul is mine. Because he wants me to be. _

_ Because he won’t let me die. _

To that, Harry doesn’t say anything.

They merge into a conversation much less consequential—Malfoy telling Harry about the latest Quidditch match between the Holyhead Harpies and the Montrose Magpies—and both boys breathe much easier. Voldemort isn’t spoken of again until much later that evening, after the sun is set and as they near the time when they can’t put off Harry returning to his room and Malfoy going his separate way much longer.

“You’re sure he won’t Legilimize me again?” Malfoy asks, trepidation lacing his voice and worrying his bottom lip between his teeth—a habit that he must be scolded for regularly.

“As long as he’s averse to killing you, he won’t.”

“You’re sure?”

Harry turns to face him completely, tucking his feet beneath him on the couch and watching Malfoy determinedly looking away from him. From this angle he can only see his profile—the jut of his pointed chin and his Adam's apple bobbing with every nervous swallow. There’s something in his voice. “What is this about?”

Nagini lays dozing on the carpet. Malfoy looks stuck somewhere between the verge of tears and the verge of being sick. Harry’s chest is tightening, because something is wrong. Something is incredibly wrong; he just knows.

Draco Malfoy says, “I need to tell you something.”

———

Harry is woken the next morning by the first nightmare he’s had since waking up to see Voldemort standing at the end of his bed. In his dream, Dumbledore and Snape are standing on the Chess board that Ron, Harry, and Hermione stood on during first year, just before Harry confronted Quirrel. Snape is playing Ron’s role, the strategist, guiding the black pieces across the board with Dumbledore posing as a bishop. Dumbledore is letting him lead… Dumbledore trusts him… 

“It’s the only way,” Snape says, “you’ve got to be taken.” It’s an echo of Ron’s words, but not—a cruel mockery of the game they’d played to defeat Voldemort when he was little more than a phantom, a pathetic thing leeching off of others.

Dumbledore protests.

“That’s chess!” Snape hisses in a tone all too familiar to Harry. “You’ve got to make some sacrifices!” He looks across the board to the White’s queen. “Pawn, move to D3.”

The pawn moves and the queen glides across the board. Harry hears the crack of Dumbledore’s skull as he falls.

Where Ron sacrificed himself to allow Harry to take the king, Snape led Dumbledore directly into the queen’s path. When Ron looked at Harry and Hermione and said, _ You’ve got to make some sacrifices! _he only meant that he himself was the sacrifice. Snape… a traitor… and Dumbledore trusted him… 

Harry has to leave. He has to reach him. Dumbledore needs to know that Snape is a traitor—that he’s been aiding Draco in his attempts to kill him, that he’s loyal to Voldemort.

Harry can’t look at Draco Malfoy.

As soon as he told Harry why he looks so damn tired all the time—the task he was given to protect his father, cursing Katie Bell, the Room of Requirement, Snape assisting him through all of it—Harry couldn’t look at him. He left the room running, getting lost nearly immediately with Nagini tagging along at his heels, no doubt ready to bite him if he were to stray too close to an exit. He was saved finally by Pipkey—_Master Harry is looking distressed. Pipkey is able to help, sir. Pipkey is wishing to help Harry Potter—_who took hold of Harry’s slacks and apparated them both back into his room, where Harry promptly slid to the ground and stayed there. He isn’t sure at what point he made his way to his four-poster and fell asleep atop the sheets, but in the morning he woke sweating despite the chill.

Harry has to leave. Harry has to get out, and he doesn’t want to look at Draco Malfoy. Harry has to find a way out of the Manor and reveal Snape for who he is and he doesn’t want to look at the boy with his tired, tired eyes and grey skin and too-thin wrists. And Harry doesn’t want Draco dead—or Lucius, for that matter, as they roughly equate to the same thing—but neither does he want Dumbledore, for Harry’s sake and everyone else’s. There is no war without Albus Dumbledore. There is no victory if he’s gone, and Voldemort knows; of course he does.

Harry doesn’t want to look at Draco Malfoy until he does, and then he doesn’t want to look away. When Malfoy appears in Harry’s doorway he expects to be angry, hurt, _ something_, but Harry is nothing but saddened—saddened by this corner the boy has been backed into and the paths he’s been given; saddened by the choices he’s been forced to make; saddened by the future he hasn’t gotten to choose.

Draco says, “Are you still upset with me?”

All Harry says is, “We have to leave.”

———

Harry isn’t surprised when Voldemort finally comes.

It’s easier being angry at him when he’s standing in front of Harry. It’s easier to remember what he did when he can look at his eyes. Inhuman. Blood red. Piercing. Ugly and ugly and ugly. He repeats the last like a prayer. There is nothing beautiful here; no kindness in these snake eyes; no mercy in these irises. 

Monster. Monster. It’s easier to remember when Harry can look at him. Never mind the itching soothing itself beneath his skin. Never mind the ease of his month-long headache. Never mind that. (_Monster. Monster_.) Never mind that Harry didn’t realize how very heavy he was until Voldemort appeared in his doorway and everything within him let out a heavy breath. 

Harry doesn’t want him here.

The first thing Voldemort says is, “I don’t wish to cause you any further harm.”

“Why?” _ Why wouldn’t you? Why won’t you? _

Voldemort tips his head, regarding Harry thoughtfully. His eyes look sharper than they ever have before. Harder to look at and harder to turn away from. Impossible not to feel penetrated by. “A question that I would quite like to know the answer to, as well.”

“I’m sure you can think of something,” Harry remarks shortly. “Six months ago I was being starved to death, and now you’ve let me outside and given me clean robes and my own house-elf. I want to know what the tactic is.”

“This isn’t a game of strategy.”

“It always is with you, though, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps I’m trying to win back your affections.” There’s not so much as a twitch in Voldemort’s face, no expression to discern if he’s mocking, no give to indicate sarcasm. Harry can’t read him.

“There’s no winning _ back _to be done.”

Voldemort hums, only watching Harry. The focus of his gaze is unnerving.

“You’re going to tell me about the Order.”

_ Ah, _ Harry thinks, almost sighing in relief. _ There it is. _

“No,” he says anyway.

“This isn’t up for discussion.”

“Brilliant. Let’s not discuss, then.”

Harry stifles a smug smile watching Voldemort bristle. The amount of effort he’s dedicating to not becoming outwardly murderous is almost comical. Harry could watch this forever. He’s painstakingly aware of where taunting and blind faith got him last time, but it’s so much better now, watching Voldemort _ fight _it. For whatever reason, he really is trying his best to be on good behavior.

Measuredly, he says, “I don’t require your permission.”

“You can’t _ force _ me to speak,” Harry responds stubbornly.

Voldemort hums somewhere in the back of his throat and crosses the room. Harry recoils as he stops to sit in the chair beside the bed where the boy sits, but Voldemort comes no closer than that. “Perhaps there will be no speaking, then.”

The moment the words compute within Harry’s head he snaps his eyes shut. _ No. No no no. _

He feels twelve again, standing in the Chamber of Secrets with his eyes clenched shut against the basilisk and being taunted by the memory of Tom Riddle while Ginny lay dying. This time the eyes aren’t yellow, but red. This time he won’t die, not really, not quite.

“Open your eyes,” Voldemort orders. Harry doesn’t open his eyes.

One of two things happens in the next moment: Either Voldemort wordlessly and wandlessly opens Harry’s eyes—which is a possibility, as it doesn’t expressly hurt Harry—or he does nothing but reach out and brush Harry with his magic and the sensation is enough for his eyes to fly open of their own accord. Voldemort’s magic is… dizzying. 

Whatever the scenario, it serves its purpose. When his eyes open all they see is red.

He knows it’s coming moments before it does, and in those brief seconds he thinks countless things, all on top of each other, all without any sense.

He pictures in vivid clarity what it will feel like to have Voldemort inside his head; the revulsion hits him so abruptly that it churns his stomach. He imagines Voldemort’s dark presence within him, watching memories of Ron and Hermione play out, scenes of Harry at the Burrow with Mrs. Weasley’s arms around him, Christmas mornings in the Gryffindor common room and his first step into Honeydukes. All of his most precious, most tender moments, stripped bare and laid out for his dirty eyes to taint. The violation of it, the sickness…

Next, Harry thinks of Draco.

Draco sitting beside him on the couch and spilling every secret that he’s been guarding with his life—as if they _ were _ his life, because they are, aren’t they?—and what would happen to him if Harry lets Voldemort see. Inexplicably, Harry pictures Lucius Malfoy—a man he’s always loathed and a full-grown bully—and sees terrified eyes. He sees Lucius, a man he’s never seen so much as slouch, standing on trembling legs in front of the thing he considers his Lord. He hears the desperation in his voice as he tries in vain to hit Harry with the _ Cruciatus _ curse, unable only because he doesn’t _ want _to. For all his faults, Lucius Malfoy is not a cruel man. He’s a dog backed into a corner and nothing more.

Harry has always been dreadful at Occlumency—evidenced by what ultimately led him here in the first place—so blocking out Voldemort, one of the most skilled Legilimens alive, is hopeless at best. Harry can’t block him out and he can’t overpower him, but Draco, above all else, is what Harry refuses to give up to him.

He sees it coming moments before it comes.

So Harry doesn’t try to put up walls. He doesn’t push or pull or recoil. Rather than put up any pathetic line of defense, he opens up, and in the same instant throws his head into the most violent disarray he can manage.

It isn’t hard, after all, for Harry to get lost in his head; his only hope is that Voldemort will do the same.

So Harry looks at him without hesitation.

**———**

_ “Legilimens.” _

Harry’s mind is vast.

It’s immediately clear that he’s never been trained in Occlumency, or if he has been he was dreadful at it. There are no walls. There’s nothing he needs to pick his way through, although he surely could. Just doorways upon doorways upon doorways, none of which are locked. They open for him without even a touch.

Voldemort quickly finds that Harry’s mind is full of wreckage. He sifts through the jumbled mess of it all, flashing by memories that seem like they may be relevant but are gone too quickly for him to latch onto. Harry isn’t skilled in occlumency and he can’t be evading Voldemort by his own efforts—his mind is simply chaos. 

The doors lead to nothing but more disorder, more memories throwing themselves about as if caught in the wind of a hurricane. They’re all there, everything he might need, but all moving too quickly for him to grasp. It’s irritating beyond belief. 

Eventually he ceases his efforts in trying to pull the relevant memories as they pass and simply tries to take in as much as he can. He opens door after door, gets caught in gust after gust and storm after storm. How does Harry _ live _in this? How does he keep track of himself?

Or perhaps, he muses, his mind just isn’t fond of Voldemort.

One door is different.

It opens not to chaos but what must be its polar opposite; it opens to nothing, an expanse that stretches as far as Voldemort can make out. It isn’t black or white or pigmented in any way. It has no substance at all. It’s the negative image of all that Harry is.

Voldemort knows from experience that his instinct can’t be trusted when considered in the context of Harry. Harry undoes all that Voldemort is, tangles him in knots, leaves him dazed. Common sense in the presence of Harry Potter is myth, a child’s fantasy at best. Voldemort knows he shouldn’t succumb to the urge that tells him to step through the door frame, but succumb he does. 

Voldemort falls, and he knows the direction. A mind can’t be all anarchy, after all. A mind needs to begin somewhere. 

———

Harry’s mind begins in a cupboard.

There’s a bed big enough to fit perhaps a seven or eight year old and a few damaged figurines set on shelves: four or five toy army men with their parachutes already ripped off or torn, a miniature nutcracker that doesn’t function—and what a strange toy for a child to have—and a wooden horse missing its back leg. On the opposite shelf is a meager collection of clothing that seems far too generous in fabric to have fit Harry, especially as a child. A single pillow. A few thin blankets and a set of ratty sheets.

That’s all. In some cases a subconscious mind can alter scenes to fit more closely in metaphor to how they felt at the time. Perhaps if Harry had lived comfortably but felt unloved and neglected, the place he once slept might shift to reflect that rather than reality, but Voldemort can feel the raw magic here, the bareness of it. This isn’t metaphor; this is simply how it had been.

He trails his fingers along the bed sheets and sees no memories of more substance than a few nightmares, blinding green light and a woman’s scream. He supposes that’s his fault. The toys are a bit more interesting. He sees Harry nicking army men from the yard outside where they were abandoned and hiding them in his pockets, just enough as to not be noticed. It’s clear to note how very large the pockets are, then how large the shorts are, not just in proportion to his thin, thin body, but objectively as well. The clothing came from quite a large boy--and Harry was in no way a large boy.

When he touches the nutcracker he gets his first glimpse of Harry’s muggle family. Harry has just come back to the home, from where Voldemort doesn’t know, to find the family in the sitting room. There are programs on the table from _ The Nutcracker_, and a piggy boy is crying loudly that he missed his TV programs to go to this ‘dreadful, _ boring _ show’. Beside him is a large man who greatly resembles a walrus looking rather bored at the entire affair. A thin woman rather resembling a blonde horse is cooing over the pig, spouting apologies to calm him down. Voldemort absently notes the clear lack of tears in the boy’s eyes as he wails. He tosses the miniature nutcracker on the ground in his fit, and as the family files upstairs to bed without so much as a glance at Harry standing in the doorway, the woman still anxiously hovering over the wailing boy, it’s left there. The younger version of Harry grabs the wooden treasure in his hand and turns to the small door set under the stairs, which he enters before setting the toy gently next to his miniature horse and crawling beneath the thin sheets.

When Voldemort tries to swallow it feels thick.

When nothing else in the room offers insight he opens the door, crouching down significantly to exit. It opens into the sitting room from the prior memory. The room seems pristine and untouched, as if from a model house displayed to potential buyers rather than a place that a family was to live in. There are no items that seem to stand out, so he turns right into the kitchen. 

On the island of the kitchen sits a knobbly stick. At his touch it unravels into a memory of the same boy, although somehow he’s grown even fatter, dressed in an absurd looking uniform of orange and maroon and carrying the same heavy stick. The muggle parents look on, teary-eyed, and he watches as Harry shakes with silent laughter. A short blur, then they’ve changed positions. “_Get the mail, Harry_.” Then, “_Make Dudley get it_.” Then, “_Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley_.” The pig—Dudley—doesn’t poke, but instead swings towards Harry’s head in earnest. Harry—thin, thin Harry—ducks and leaves the kitchen to collect the mail. The walrus continues to read his newspaper, not batting an eye.

A blur, then Harry dodging a frying pan swung towards him by the woman. A blur, then Harry dodging the arms of a rat-looking boy as Dudley approaches, grinning with his fist raised. Harry sniping at Dudley and knowing then that it is wisest to run. Harry wandering the streets of Little Whinging to avoid the pig and his friends. Harry being hit by the muggle man most of all, because he was the only one Harry could never seem to dodge.

The flashes come faster, barely glimpses. Harry being shoved into the closet with the promise of no food for a week. Harry’s hair being brutally cut by the muggle woman while Dudley laughs. Harry being forced to cook and clean the house all day while the rest of the family lounged. Harry nicking food from the kitchen late at night. Harry examining his bruised face in the mirror. Harry being bullied by a large woman resembling the muggle man. Harry being neglected, ignored, deprived of everything a child might need to be happy. Harry being lied to about _ magic, _the one thing that might have saved him. Harry, alone for ten years. 

Voldemort comes back into the kitchen trembling with rage and yanks himself violently from Harry’s mind.

Somewhere, distantly, Voldemort recalls that he was supposed to be finding information on the Order of the Phoenix, but that recollection seems dimmer by every second that passes. Everything within him seethes, _ burns _ to track down the muggles and murder them, each and every one of them. He would take his time. He would make sure they _ hurt _ the way Harry had. He would carve into them, pick the most gruesome spells, watch them burn.

The sight of Harry beside the pig burns in Voldemort’s head. Malnourished, bony, while the boy beside him was porky and overfed and spoiled. No wonder Harry is so small even now; years of malnutrition has stunted his growth. He wants to _ kill_.

Harry is gasping in front of him, hand pressed to the side of his head. “How _ dare you_,” he hisses, eyes meeting Voldemort’s, burning. “You have _ no right.” _

Even as he says it he’s curling into himself on the far side of the bed, visibly shaking, and behind his burning, burning, burning eyes, Voldemort can see tears.

He could have done a lot right then—simply left Harry there in the bedroom to work things out for himself, for example; or taunted, pulling from the well of cruelty that is never far to reach; he could have apologized, even, and as absurd as it sounds it still would have been a safer option—but he instead takes perhaps the most foolish action, one he will never be able to explain or justify. 

He slides onto the bed and pulls Harry into his arms before he’s even given a chance to flinch.

And, miraculously, Harry doesn’t pull away.

Maybe it’s because Harry feels so _ warm warm warm _ and to Harry Voldemort must feel so _ warm warm warm _ and this manor is too large not to be so damn cold all the time, and both are shaking, shaking. There is a steadiness there between them when they touch that Voldemort had no doubt would be there, as it always has. There is an involuntary sense of safety that Voldemort has no doubt will always be.

Harry is slumped forward, very nearly atop Voldemort’s lap, his head in his neck and breath fanning across his throat, and this is the closest they’ve been since the day Voldemort touched his mark. It’s the first time they’ve touched at all since then, out of fear or force Voldemort isn’t sure. The soft skin of Harry’s face is bare against Voldemort’s neck.

Harry feels like a fragile thing in his arms that he can do nothing but pull closer. He tests this cautiously, letting his face rest on Harry’s wild curls, who doesn’t seem to mind at all. He tightens his arms and Harry doesn’t protest. He breathes him in. 

_ Warm warm warm. _

This is too much. It’s too much, but Harry is crying soundless tears and he’s moved closer now, gravitating toward Voldemort’s heat and curling up against his chest, fingers clutching the front of his robes desperately, and this is _ foreign _ and _ terrifying _and absolutely ludicrous, and Voldemort can’t stop. He can’t stop. He can’t stop.

Both of them have been seized by something completely separate from their conscious selves, something primal and bone deep, something entirely rooted in old, old magic. This is a blind man seeing the sun for the first time then expected to step into shadow, as if that would ever be enough.

But a blind man becomes greedy, and not even the sun is enough once you’ve felt it. There’s a burn in Voldemort’s fingertips, a deep itch and an instinct so powerful he’s surprised he doesn’t buckle with it, but he can’t buckle, because here is Harry in his arms, already tumbling.

He knows what he wants. What his soul wants. 

The pain he felt when he activated this wretched labyrinth is indescribable. That feeling like every cell in his body was being torn in two, like _ Please make it stop, _ like _ I’ve never begged in my life, but I will beg for this_, like not dying, but something undoubtedly more severe—Voldemort will never suffer it again. No matter how his body craves it, how his entire being reaches for it, his soul bashes its fists against the walls for it, his skull cracks in two for it. 

Touching Harry’s mark was the most painful thing he’s ever suffered, second not even to creating a Horcrux; the second most painful is pushing the boy away.

The act is almost gentle without intent for reasons he can’t explain.

He only flinches slightly at how very _ lost _ the lion suddenly looks, crumpled upon the mattress as Voldemort backs away from him, nearly stumbling. The _ warm warm warm _vanishes as quickly as it appeared, and it’s with more effort than he ever imagined himself capable of that Voldemort forces himself to turn around, away from the boy and his eyes brimming with tears Voldemort caused, away from the vivid green, because if he continues looking he’ll stay.

_ Salazar_, this is just ridiculous.

———

Harry doesn’t have the strength to fight it. Not this time.

He doesn’t have the drive in him to be disgusted, or to fool himself into thinking he’s disgusted, or to try very hard to be. Harry doesn’t have it in him to deny, deny, deny. He’s sick.

There’s no room in Harry for disgust or humiliation or anger. He can’t even find the will within himself to feign confusion, because Harry isn’t confused at all. There’s nothing confusing about this, no matter how he wishes there was.

This—the undeniable feeling that he has just come home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> keep yourselves safe <3
> 
> if you want to talk you can find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	13. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wishing all of you and your loved ones well <3 keep taking care of yourselves

_ Home. _

Harry thinks: Hogwarts. The sun setting over the Great Lake and how he never looked at it enough; Hagrid’s awful, awful rock cakes and the way Harry, Hemione, and Ron would choke them down anyway; Christmas Feasts in the Great Hall, pumpkin juice, treacle pudding; waking up to his first pile of presents and falling asleep to Neville snoring every night for five years but not minding, not even a little bit.

_ Home, _and Harry thinks: The Burrow when he first laid eyes on it from the seat of a flying Ford Anglia; the first time he saw the Weasleys at King’s Cross, six heads of blindingly red hair and Mrs. Weasley calling him ‘dear’; chickens roaming the front yard; various Weasleys running into each other as they flew up and down the narrow staircase, always stepping on each other’s feet in a house too small to fit so many, too small to fit so much love, managing it anyway.

_ Home, _and Harry feels sick, because the very last thing that should come to mind is Voldemort. And yet.

Can Harry be blamed for his soul? What it wants? Can he be blamed for his inability to turn away from it?

Even if Harry admits the part of this he had no control over, there is nothing to blame for falling into his arms—for leaning into his chest with Bellatrix Lestrange before him, for craving how his head felt when nestled in Voldemort’s neck. Harry cannot be blamed for his soul’s want for Voldemort’s, but can easily be blamed for how he has caved to it; he can be blamed for the part of him that wants for him, the part of Harry that could surely be raging against instinct and yet still falls docile.

Harry and Voldemort have been playing a dangerous game for far longer than Harry should ever have allowed. If there ever was a time to leave it’s now—while Harry has more freedom than he’s ever been given by Voldemort and likely ever will at his disposal and an ally. 

It’s time for Harry and Draco to leave. The day after Voldemort appeared in his bedroom—three days before Draco’s scheduled return to Hogwarts—Harry tells him so.

What follows is a lot of argument and very little resolution. Harry is insistent—_I’m leaving one way or another, and if I leave you here I’m leaving you to die. You and your father and your mother too_—and Draco is furious—_I should have never told you anything, you stupid Gryffindor git—_and neither of them can see a way out of this that seems at all possible.

Eventually Draco must come to realize that there will be no talking Harry out of this and concedes slightly. At the very least he entertains the idea for Harry’s sake.

“Say I agree, how do you think we’ll ever make it out? I don’t have a wand and neither do you, there are anti-apparition wards covering the entire estate layered ten thick, and that’s not even to mention whatever alarms would alert the Dark Lord immediately if either of us were to go anywhere near an exit without his express permission—which we won’t be getting. Then there’s the case of my parents in which my father is in metaphorical shackles for the Dark Lord that he won’t be getting out of unless I kill Professor Dumbledore-” he carries on right past Harry’s recoil, “-which I can’t do if I’ve escaped with the bloody golden boy and left my mother and father here to die.”

“So we bring them with us.” 

“Oh, of course,” Draco’s voice has risen by a few notes, “why didn’t I think of that! I’ll just go let my father know not to let the Dark Lord look inside his bloody head for a few days while we’re cooking up a plan to slip out from under his nose-” he pauses and snorts, then apparently deems the joke unnecessary to voice aloud and carries on. “That’ll go swell, Harry. I’m sure they’ll waltz right out the door along with us.”

“So we’ll convince your mother and tell your father at the last minute.”

Draco throws his hands up. “You’re impossible! You’re not getting anywhere near a doorway without the Dark Lord appearing in half a moment, whether you’re escorted by a Malfoy or not—even my parents can’t apparate from inside the building. What’s the plan? Want to ask Nagini to help us? Maybe we can convince Pipkey to smuggle us out!”

Harry freezes.

“Malfoy…” he says slowly.

“What?” the other boy snaps, sitting down on the bed with a huff.

“You’re a genius even when you’re being a complete prat.” Draco seems torn between puffing up at the compliment or continuing to insult Harry’s intelligence. “_ hit. _How did I not think of this sooner?”

“Spit it out then,” Draco says apprehensively, no doubt worrying over how Harry’s Gryffindor-favoring decision making will sabotage them this time around. 

“Don’t yell or anything,” Harry warns, which doesn’t seem to do anything for Draco’s nerves. Harry takes a deep breath. “Dobby,” he calls as loudly as he can risk.

They wait ten seconds, thirty, a full minute. There’s nothing. Harry breathes out a long sigh of disappointment and Draco rolls his eyes, giving no mind to softening the wound. “Really?”

“I just thought…” Harry trails off, biting his lip, and he notices belatedly that he’s teared up. He blinks his eyes rapidly to clear them. “They can apparate in and out of Hogwarts even with the wards.” Harry feels the disappointment weigh on his chest, on his shoulders, dragging him down and down and down. He only put half-faith into the idea, and even then it’s almost unbearable.

Harry cannot live the rest of his life like this.

Draco must see or sense it somehow, because his eyes soften and his tone comes out pitying. “It isn’t your fault. It was a good guess, but I’m sure the Hogwarts’ founders did that intentionally. The Dark Lord is too cunning, Harry, he would never-”

_ Crack! _

A small, wrinkled creature materializes before them, large ears flapping as his body shakes with his own weeping, his tennis ball-sized eyes glistening. “Harry Potter sir! We all have been wondering where you are, sir! Such a relief to see you alive, such a relief!” Then his entire body heaves with a particularly violent sob and he stumbles forward to fall at Harry’s feet, wiping his tears on the hem of Harry’s jeans.

“Dobby!” Harry whispers urgently. “Please keep it down.”

Draco is standing shell-shocked, frozen at the sight of his old house-elf. “Dobby,” he says, stunned.

Harry briefly worries that it may be too upsetting for Dobby to be back in the Manor, the home was abused in for Merlin knows how long, but the house-elf barely spares a glance for the Malfoy heir. “Harry Potter sir,” and this time Dobby’s voice has quieted, albeit still wobbling with emotion. “So happy Dobby is to see you alive.”

“Yes, yes,” Harry agrees distractedly, glancing toward the door nervously. At any point Nagini could come along, wanting to check on Harry or wind herself around his calves. He meets Draco’s eyes and the boy wordlessly makes his way to the entrance, standing as casually as can be managed in the doorway. “I’m pleased to see you too, but we haven’t got much time. Dobby, can you tell the Order where we are? Can you bring them here?”

Draco gawks from the doorway. “That wasn’t the plan!”

“It’s a much better one,” Harry waves him off. “The Order has wands—and aurors. How much do you trust us to make our way out of the Manor with both your parents and no magic?”

“It was _ your _idea!”

“Yes, well I’m a Gryffindor, aren’t I? You’re supposed to be the sensible one.”

“Dobby will go right away sir!” the house-elf says, interrupting the two and still nodding. “Harry Potter need not worry!”

Harry sees Draco’s eyes widen and his hand start flapping toward Harry and Dobby in his side vision. “Dobby, go now!” 

With a deafening crack the house-elf is gone. Harry flinches at the sound—no wizard within fifty feet in any directions could spare mind to that.

When it’s Nagini who slides through the doorway Harry tries his hardest to control his expression. He watches her nostrils flare and tongue flick out like she’s tasting the air. Quickly, Harry drops to sit on the carpet. _ “Nagini,” _he greets, and this seems to please her enough to abandon her suspicion. Once she has draped herself entirely over and around his body she hisses softly in content.

_ “Harry,” _she greets.

_ “Hi, girl,” _and he rests his hand on her scaled back.

“So fucking odd,” Draco mutters, collapsing back onto the armchair.

The next day consists of both Harry and Draco trying to lighten the mood in any way they can manage and neither’s efforts being particularly successful. They sit restlessly, switching absently between Chess, Exploding Snap, and Gobstones (which Harry finally convinced Draco to play) whenever one grew too dull. The topic of Dobby is avoided by some unspoken agreement for as long as they can manage it; it seems easier not to think or talk about it at all. Still, they spend the day waiting for news, and only when nothing has come by nightfall do they broach the subject.

The boys lean against the couch side-by-side, enjoying the warmth of the fire the most that they can. Draco speaks into the empty space. “So he didn’t come today, fine. He’ll be back tomorrow. Or the next. He won’t abandon us here.” The tone of his voice contradicts the sureness of his words.

“Neither will the Order,” Harry says and sounds much more sure. He tries to feel it as well. He gives a few seconds of silence to give Draco space to respond, and when he doesn’t Harry asks the dreaded question. “How much longer do we have?”

Draco’s swallow is audible. “Two more nights.”

Harry shuts his eyes, as if blocking his vision can somehow block out the very idea of being alone again. Malfoy doesn’t say anything—probably he doesn’t know what he can—but when Harry blindly reaches for his hand he doesn’t pull away. Harry needs it, just for something to hold. He needs something to keep him from flying off the earth altogether.

A long time later, long enough that the heat from the fire has started to make their hands clammy, Malfoy says, “This fucking sucks.”

That’s it. No attempts at comfort. No sugar-coated words. No promises.

It is the kindest thing he could have said.

———

Before Draco leaves that night it’s agreed upon that tomorrow he’ll convince Narcissa, and the next day finds Harry alone.

He paces his room tirelessly. Nagini comes to check on him a few times but finds great offense at his inability to pause and let her wind around him that she leaves not too long after each visit. Even her unfailingly cathartic presence has been unable to calm Harry. He waits for one of three things: Dobby’s return, Draco’s return, or Voldemort’s return. Mostly, he worries over which will come first.

Ultimately it’s Draco’s. He appears sometime after noon leaving no room for pretense as he shuts the door firmly behind him and announces that he’s convinced Narcissa.

“She really said yes?”

“Reluctantly,” Draco admitted, flopping onto Harry’s bed as if it were his own bedroom. Not that Harry would refer to this place as his bedroom—more like a generously padded cell. He scoots over a bit to give Draco room to sprawl out. “But yes, she agreed. She’s terrified, but I think that’s the only reason she said yes anyway.” He shuts his eyes, the shadow of guilt in his expression far overpowered by the palpitant relief. “She hates that we’re not telling my father, you know, but she understands the necessity.”

Harry eyes Draco from where he sits beside him. He looks more content now than he has a single moment since Harry’s arrival. Hope, it seems, has done Draco Malfoy some good. Enough good, perhaps, that Harry is worried to plant a single seed of doubt. This is why he hesitates before asking, “Are you confident he’ll come?”

Draco props himself on his elbows to look at Harry. He looks angry in a carefully restrained way. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing,” Harry says quickly. “I’m just asking. You know him better than I do.”

Draco doesn’t stop glaring for a few painful seconds, then he relaxes back into the mattress and closes his eyes again, folding his arms behind his neck and crossing his ankles. He looks like he should be laid out on a beach somewhere tropical, suntanning. “My father is a lot of things, namely the Dark Lord’s bitch,” Harry snorts involuntarily. Draco’s lips turn up into a slight smirk, so Harry figures he’s allowed to. “But he would never, ever betray us. He only does the Dark Lord’s bidding _ for _us. To protect us from him.”

“Alright,” Harry nods, taking his word for it. Draco knows his own father much better than Harry does, after all. “Then nothing should go wrong.”

“What a relief,” Draco says, although the sarcasm lacks fervor. “There’s nothing else to worry us about escaping the temporary headquarters of the darkest wizard alive, who happens to be keeping one of us prisoner and using the other as a tool against his greatest enemy—not now that we know my father will be coming along.”

“Shut it,” Harry says, shoving Draco’s shoulder. The boy laughs lightly, shrugging Harry off without opening his eyes. It’s a surprisingly long moment before he sobers. He says, “Dobby will come today.”

Harry drops down to lay beside him, mirroring his pose. A brief, ludicrous image flashes through his head of the two of them laid out in some place like Majorca, Harry tanning while Draco turns brilliantly red. It nearly makes him laugh aloud. Nearly. “You think so?”

“He has to,” Draco says, as if that proves his statement soundly. He sounds so much like Draco Malfoy as Harry knew him at Hogwarts—bossy and entitled and convinced that the world owes him something—that Harry starts. His head falls to the side to examine Draco’s profile. Same pointed chin. Same high cheekbones. Only older now, more worn, and somehow not the same at all. 

“Of course. I forgot that the world caters to your wishes,” Harry says. Draco jabs him in the stomach. “_ Ow _,” he says around a laugh.

“Go wash up,” Draco says, propping himself up on his elbows to peer at Harry. “Get all posh. Date with destiny, and all that.”

“I’d hate to disappoint her,” Harry agrees and stands to make his way to the bathroom.

Draco catches his wrist before he goes. “Don’t be afraid.”

The intensity in which Draco’s eyes meet his leaves Harry wondering who exactly Draco’s talking to—Harry or himself. Whether one way or the other, Harry nods. Because there is nothing else to do.

———

Voldemort will not see Harry Potter. Refuses. Fights against the constant longing for it. 

Touching him was a mistake, the most uncalculated slip of judgement he’d ever made. He and Harry both have already experienced the effects of kickstarting the bond, of reminding their souls that the other exists. It does seem that way—that their souls begin to forget that they have another half in each other’s absence. 

It isn’t that Voldemort doesn’t _ feel _ it when they don’t—that incessant itch coating the inside of his skin; the near-burn of being so near. His body or his soul, whichever it can be pinned to, feels Harry. It seeks him out like a beacon. Never, though, does it hurt like this. This pain is something fierce, something far beyond physical sensation. 

This is hunger. Biting. Ravenous. Voldemort cannot name a single thing he wouldn’t give to possess him. This unruly thing. His stubborn lion. Harry _ belongs _to him, as much as Voldemort’s own skin and eyes and fingernails belong to him. Voldemort doesn’t want to harm him the way he did before, not if hurting him means not touching him. Voldemort wants to touch. He wants to feel Harry’s skin.

Caving to it serves no purpose—not unless they can continue to cave, and cave, and cave. Every time leaves the hunger more agonizing than before, as if each touch fills up more of them and takes away just as much. Whatever it is inside of them that remains hollow when they aren’t coming together tears wider each time they come apart.

Voldemort wants him. Having Nagini at his disposal—and so very fond of Harry—allows him to observe how Harry has been. The feeling of being within her memory while she’s wrapped around the boy's body is the oddest sense of connection he’s ever experienced. He no longer asks for Draco Malfoy. It isn’t worth the fury.

It is a dangerous thing, this infatuation. He aches for Harry with the desperation of an artist gone blind looking for color or a musician gone deaf wanting to sing. This boy is a poison that has slipped beneath his skin and that, despite the agony, Voldemort cannot rid himself of. When the antidote of the poison is that which did the poisoning your options narrow to one.

Here it is—his option and his choice: Voldemort is to let himself be poisoned indefinitely, all the while hoping that this thing will finally decide to heal rather than harm. Voldemort will stay with Harry and Harry will stay with Voldemort, both wearing down the other and neither willing to ease its toxic grip.

Their souls are both the poison and the antidote. The phoenix and the flame. That which comes together and comes apart—although he and Harry are always coming apart.

Harry is his, and him Harry’s. In truth, Voldemort is concerned. He’s concerned with the ease in which he accepts these things to be true.

He immerses himself in all he missed of the war. He calls in Death Eaters, legilimizes their encounters with the light side, thinks strategy and strategy and never of green eyes and decides, finally, that he’s gathered enough information to call together his Death Eaters and continue the war that he all but abandoned.

———

Lucius Malfoy stood in the Manor’s drawing room beside a number of other Death Eaters and before Lord Voldemort. For most in the room it was the first time they’d seen the Dark Lord in months, only his closest seeing him occasionally between his long absences. The Carrow twins stood beside him, gazing at the Dark Lord nearly reverently. Then there was Rosier, Yaxley, and Goyle. Of course Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy themselves. Then countless others that had been recruited since the beginning of the Second War. Bellatrix Lestrange was nowhere to be found, despite being previously seen in the Manor by several others, and peculiarly neither was Draco. The Dark Lord, however, didn’t seem bothered by either absences, and so no one said a thing.

Lord Voldemort was addressing his Death Eaters on the topic of war, something they’d been awaiting for weeks whilst improvising in his absence. The relief in the room was thick and palpable, for the fear of the Dark Lord standing before them was more bearable, though only just, than the fear of his disapproval might he return from his absence and be displeased.

Just as he began speaking of the Order Bellatrix Lestrange appeared in the doorway, striding into the room with both a sense of urgency and an air of smugness. She didn’t, however, stop beside the rest of the Death Eaters, but instead continued on to stand just before the Dark Lord. His eyes seemed to flare at the interruption but nonetheless he turned to her. She said something softly, and moments later the Death Eaters watched the clear act of Legilimency, the Dark Lord gazing directly into her thoughts.

When he pulled away he looked horribly shaken and absolutely livid. Everyone in the room aside from Bellatrix herself stiffened, waiting for the backlash of such a reaction; never had anyone seen the Dark Lord look so angry without immediate retribution on the wizard nearest him.

There was no attack. Instead, his voice rang out cold and quiet. “Thank you Bellatrix.” With the dismissal she strode back the way she came, disappearing through the doorway and leaving the rest of the Death Eaters in a state of confusion.

The Dark Lord’s eyes burned dangerously, sharp and undoubtedly lethal. Then, as if nothing had occurred, he continued on. No one in the room relaxed in the slightest.

———

Dobby’s appearance in Harry’s room startles both him and Draco nearly to death. They’d been on edge the entire day, more so than the day before, restless and distracted and snapping at one another when they forgot all that hung on the balance of their alliance. When Dobby comes Harry is ready to collapse with relief if not for the fact that they have much more important things to do.

Things that have become impossibly more urgent than they were before.

“Harry Potter and his friends must leave now! The Dark Lord is knowing, and it will not be long until he is coming to get you, sir!”

Draco is up on his feet and at Harry’s side in an instant, pulling the boy into his side protectively.

He’s shocked into momentary stillness—by the news Dobby bears, namely, although Draco’s loosely administered comfort is plenty shaking—then sags into the touch. 

“How soon is soon?” he chokes. Harry needs _ away. _

“As soon as he is done with his Death Eaters, sir.”

Harry looks to Draco. He’s biting his lip, a telltale anxious habit. “It won’t be long. Less than an hour, probably.”

“Less than-” Harry can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. When he tries to tug away Draco only tightens his grip so Harry stops, nearly choking on something, his own throat, maybe. Draco pulls at his chin until Harry meets his eyes then keeps him there. “You’re going to be okay,” he promises, and Harry almost believes him, although this doesn’t do much at all to open up his lungs. Draco turns to the small house-elf wringing his hands before them. “Dobby, can you sidealong out of here?”

Dobby nods frantically, his oversized ears flapping. “Yes sir, Dobby is able to take you now! The wizards is staying in the house, still.”

“Good,” Draco nods, and he suddenly sounds lacking in breath as well. “Take Harry.”

“No!” Harry protests. This time Draco lets him go when he tears away. “We need to bring Draco and his parents, too.” Harry’s chest twinges a bit at the fear in Dobby’s eyes, though it lasts only a second before Dobby’s chest puffs up with pride. 

“Dobby will rescue Harry Potter and his friends.”

“No you will _ not, _” Draco hisses, glaring at both Harry and Dobby in turn. “Take Harry. My parents are in the drawing room with the rest of the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord. There’s no getting them out.”

“Then we’re just bringing Draco,” Harry says to Dobby, grabbing Draco’s hand.

The Malfoy heir tugs it away, although it doesn’t seem without effort. “I can’t leave them.” He turns pleading eyes to Harry, and Harry only pauses because he’s never seen him so torn. Draco’s cocksure of every decision he makes; he’s always been that way. “Please,” he says softly. “I can’t.”

Harry closes his eyes simply because he can’t look at Draco’s. Their options and odds run through Harry’s mind quickly. There seems to be only two, with only one of the two having any plausible success rate.

But the other means leaving Draco.

To hell with it all.

“Dobby, you’re going to apparate both of us into the drawing room,” Harry says. “Not outside—we don’t have time for any sneaking around and Voldemort will feel me as soon as I’m close enough to see them.” Draco starts to protest and Harry glares until he shuts his mouth resentfully. “Narcissa already knows, and she’ll be beside your father, yeah?” It takes Draco a moment to realize it’s a question, then he nods. “So grab your mum, and she’ll grab Lucius.”

“You two?”

“We’ll be right behind.” He turns to Dobby, his mind whirling. “You need to apparate us into the very middle of the group. Coming at them from a distance won’t work. We just need to be quick.” He swallows thickly, looking at Draco. “Really quick.”

Dobby nods vehemently. “You’re going to kill us all,” Draco says, then turns to Harry, eyes wide open and desperate. “Tell me we’re going to be okay,” he pleads.

_ Don’t be afraid. _

“We’re going to be okay,” Harry says, keeping his eyes on Draco and putting every ounce of belief he has behind the words. Draco keeps wide eyes on him for a few more beats before he slumps into Harry’s side, having to hunch slightly to accommodate the few extra inches of height. His head falls to lean against Harry’s.

Harry knows Draco doesn’t believe him but feels him nod anyway. 

Because it is the only thing to do.

There’s only a few minutes spared for terror before Dobby has both boys’ hands in his and they’ve materialized within a crowd of dark wizards. It somehow slipped Harry’s mind that most of the Dark Lord’s followers believed him to be dead right up to the moment in which Harry stands before each of their astounded faces. They seem dumbfounded enough not to question the presence of a house-elf and the Malfoy heir beside him for the time being, a few moments in which Draco begins pushing past Death Eaters to reach his parents at the back.

Three beats are spared—four, five—before hell breaks.

The following events come to Harry in brief flashes, like a film reel that has had large pieces torn away then arranged together in the wrong order.

There are thirty wands being dropped from thirty sleeves and aimed toward him, then Voldemort’s voice, wild with rage and ordering that no one is permitted to touch him. No one but Voldemort himself can lay hands or magic on Harry. The memory of Little Hangleton seems too close at that moment. The faces of the Death Eater’s that loom on all sides of him must be closer than in reality. Harry is seeing the world through a funhouse mirror. They’re confused and panicked, clearly unsure of the proper action to avoid their Lord’s wrath. 

Harry blindly searches behind him and sees Draco in a gap between bodies. He’s standing beside his parents and Dobby is gone.

Then a _ crack _and the elf stands a few feet from Harry holding the hand of Tonks, who’s holding onto the sleeve of Mad-Eye Moody, who has a hold on Sirius’ shoulder. Spells fly. The Death Eaters come back to themselves immediately and the room bursts into action. Harry sees the mural of the ballroom where he stared up at it from the floor, Bellatrix’s Cruciatus still sharp on his skin.

There are choppy images of Voldemort crossing the room, wandless magic flying in all directions and sending Death Eaters and Order members alike to the ground or into the air, wounded or shouting or already knocked out. His eyes never spare a glance for his wreckage; they meet Harry’s and stay.

The eye contact is broken. Harry is darting around and behind and through wizards, dodging the looming presence of Voldemort’s magic and how very far it can reach.

Dobby leaves and returns then repeats, the room filling with Order members by the second. Harry doesn’t look at them and they don’t look at him. He’s pushing through the crowd in the direction of the Malfoys.

Voldemort’s magic is choking the room and Harry can see the effect it has on the witches and wizards around them, both light and dark. They seem dizzy, drunk and dazed on the power of it even as they fight—it’s unlike anything he’s ever seen before. Harry is unaffected—he feels a bit queasy at most—although the weight of it on all sides isn’t something easily ignored. Perhaps Harry’s used to it. Perhaps Harry has come so close to Voldemort’s magic that it has half become his own.

Voldemort’s magic is still lashing out, now seemingly without any conscious thought or meaning on Voldemort’s part. It’s like accidental magic, if accidental magic had the power of gods rather than a scared eight year-old boy ending up on the school’s rooftop. Witches and wizards are falling and Voldemort can’t seem to be bothered by which they might be. Enemies or followers. Lucius and Bellatrix or the rest of his cult. He’s reaching for Harry and all else has become disposable.

Harry is moving again. The magic is trying to latch onto him and he has no fathomable idea how he’s managing to keep it back.

Then he’s beside Draco who’s beside his mother who has her eyes locked on Lucius who stands ten feet away, looking at the two of them with an expression carefully schooled blank. Draco is pleading without saying a word. Narcissa is crying. 

Nothing ceases movement even as Harry feels the entire world come to a standstill, watching Lucius’ gaze turn toward his Lord across the room. Lucius’ eyes fall to the skin of his left arm that has been exposed and gleams with the Dark Mark. His eyes return to his wife and son, looking and looking and looking.

A steady hand. A raised wand. A flash of light. Narcissa falls and doesn’t stand up. 

Harry reaches Draco before he can follow, pushes him aside, ducks a second spell fired from somewhere behind Lucius, who's already somewhere out of sight. Draco is crying—deep, wracking sobs that Harry never could have imagined leaving Draco’s skinny body. Fragile body. Harry can only hold him together.

Dobby appears beside them.

The last few moments are clearest:

There’s an admission that Harry will never voice to anyone but himself—and even admitting it to himself is difficult. Somewhere, buried deeply enough that he can easily pretend it doesn’t exist, there is a part of Harry that does not want to leave. He won’t go so far as to say he’ll miss Voldemort—taking a step over that line is where he can truly admit insanity—but there will be something inside of him that’s missing. 

In the wizarding world it’s considered all but a sin to reject a soulmate—for the fact that not everyone gets one, the fact that everyone would give anything to find theirs. There’s a reason soulmates never separate and there’s a reason it’s considered heinous. There’s no way to tear himself from Voldemort without damaging something essential within himself. Harry and Voldemort have been designed into a game that neither can win.

Harry wants to stay but he needs to go, and he wants to go but needs to stay, and this is the game he and Voldemort have been playing—both trying to pull apart while magic wants to bring them together, resisting like opposite magnets forced against each other. 

Harry has to go.

But as he meets Voldemort’s eyes across the drawing room he feels like burning alive and he feels too cold and he feels like crawling right inside Voldemort’s chest just to soak it up. Voldemort’s eyes are speaking and Harry can’t seem to cover his ears and in that moment, just a few seconds, barely enough time to exhale, Harry wants to stay.

Then Draco slips out of Harry’s arms to hunch over his mother on the floor and Harry falls beside him to duck a spell. Dobby has one arm around both of them, Draco is holding his mother, and all at once they’re gone.

Red burns behind Harry’s eyelids. Forever and forever and forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and thus... the end of part one.
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	14. Becoming

_“He’s going to burn me alive,” says Harry. _

_ Dumbledore says, “Then rise from the ashes.” _

**Part Two:**

**The Phoenix and the Flame**

Harry Potter was battered, beaten and hungry when Hagrid came through the broken doorway of the shambled house in the sea. He was foolish and reckless standing in the Department of Mysteries, face to face with the Dark Lord, wands drawn.

Six months later and Harry is not beaten, nor hungry, nor asking for death and thinking himself invincible. For years he was placed on a pedestal, glorified by the public and romanticized into an image he couldn’t fill, but Harry Potter is not invincible, nor is he heroic. He is selfish in his attempts at selflessness, irresponsible in every attempt at bravery, dangerous in all his self-sacrifice. Harry is not a victim, nor is he a hero or a villain; Harry is simply afraid, as he has always been. 

Harry Potter was dancing on the edge of defeat when he woke in a barren room with threadbare carpet and peeling wallpaper and a waterlogged ceiling, but he was not in pieces.

When Harry Potter apparates from the drawing room of Malfoy Manor he is nothing at all but torn. 

———

Freedom is like this:

It looks like Draco’s face cast in the dim lighting of Grimmauld Place and his form hunched over his mother’s body. Narcissa is breathing, not bleeding, barely injured at all, really. She was only stunned. Freedom looks like a fallen mother and a boy abandoned but alive and alive and alive. “She’s breathing,” Draco is saying, voice halfway to broken but not breaking. Freedom looks like unbreaking. Becoming and unbecoming. 

It looks like slow motion, like faces blurred and voices slurring, people he should recognize, or would if he could only focus on the movement in his peripheral vision, but freedom doesn’t look like family, not yet; freedom looks like Draco Malfoy and Harry’s scarred wrists.

Freedom feels like knees colliding with a wooden-planked floor, feeling the bruises already forming. Healing. Becoming and unbecoming. 

Harry doesn’t think Draco has yet realized that no one is attacking them anymore, so Harry holds onto him for fear of Draco letting go. He’s hunched over Narcissa like he might shield her from battle, but there is no battle. This is freedom. 

Someone tries to pull Harry away from Narcissa and Draco, switching tactics when Harry stubbornly clings onto him. They pull the two back as one, one being with four unbroken eyes. Draco goes when Harry does.

There is conversation. _ Harry is alive, _ and _ No, Sirius, you will not speak to him yet. No one will. _ Murmurs. Shouts. _ Can’t you see he’s in shock? They both are. I can’t imagine what an ordeal they’ve gone through. _

Harry and Draco are moved to the drawing room and sat down on a sofa with blankets wrapped around their shoulders. Someone has barred the room from visitors, so it's empty but for the two boys and an additional form flitting around the outskirts of the room. Harry hasn’t the energy to focus on their face.

Beside him Draco clears his throat. The sound is startlingly present, none of Draco left behind in the room with his mother or at the Manor with his father. Harry tries to be all there too and thinks he mostly succeeds.

“Excuse me?” Draco asks. His throat sounds like it’s been teared through. There’s a hum in response, high and sweet. “Can we be allowed to sleep for a few hours?”

When the figure comes to kneel before Draco and Harry he recognizes her as Fleur Delacour. If it wasn’t obvious enough by her Veela-influenced beauty, the thick french accent that follows with her words is sign enough. “Were you hit by any spells?” she asks. Draco shakes his head, and when Harry realizes the question was aimed at both of them he mimics him. “Feeling dizzy or light-headed?”

Both shake their heads again. “Just tired,” Draco murmurs. The quiet in the drawing room against the muffled and frantic voices outside the door seems too precious to break.

She murmurs a _lumos_ then raises her wand to Draco’s face. 

“Draco, follow the wand with your eyes.” She passes the wand slowly back and forth a handful of times before repeating the process with Harry, then drops her wand and sits back on her heels, surveying the two of them. “They left me here to babysit, but neither of you seem to be at immediate medical risk and you aren’t children; you are only in shock. As the mediwitch pulled out of a hat this evening, I feel comfortable recommending nothing but a night of rest.” Fleur turns her gaze to Harry. “Most bedrooms on the second level are spare. You’ll want to avoid the kitchen—that’s where the crowd has gathered.” She then summons two vials from across the room and hands one to each boy. “Dreamless sleep. I expect you both will need it.”

Draco murmurs a thanks and her gaze goes soft once more as she looks at the two of them. “Narcissa is safe,” she says, then leans forward to kiss each boy on the cheek. “Now shoo. You need rest.”

Harry does his best to tune out the voices entirely as they pass the kitchen. He dreads to hear what they must be saying about him and dreads news of the battle even more so. Surely someone must have come back hurt, or not at all; surely no one came out unscathed. No one but Harry and Draco, who make their way up the stairs uninjured, only bone-deep tired. Harry knows that there are more significant ways of hurting than being on the wrong side of a curse and that both he and Draco have suffered every one of them, but it doesn’t soften the blow of guilt.

Still they stand. Unbroken.

They fall asleep in the same room, on the same bed, heads blessedly emptied by the potions. Freedom. Becoming.

Harry wakes up alone.

In his scant experience, waking up in Grimmauld Place may be more disconcerting than waking up in the Riddle house. His eyes open to a lower ceiling than the room he stayed at in the Manor, a harder mattress and rougher sheets, but he recognizes the wallpaper and the voices downstairs are memories in and of themselves—ones in the nature of being forgotten. 

Still, it takes him nearly a minute to come back to himself, come back to the room, settle back into the knowledge of where he is and convince himself that it isn’t a dream, or a hallucination from Harry’s half-mad psyche, or a nightmare given to him by Voldemort. This is real. Home.

After the remembering comes the pain.

It comes in the steady beats of a war drum—sharp bolts from his scar to the tips of his fingers, panging down his every nerve. His heartbeat drives pain, his blood punishment. Harry isn’t surprised; he knew there would be consequences for his escape and he made his choice ready to bear them. So he will bear them.

His skin feels sensitive and raw as it shifts against the sheets and grimy with sweat and exertion. A shower. He’ll start with a shower. This sounds like the most bearable course of action, compared to staying sheltered in this guestroom when he hasn’t been able to walk freely for months or a trek downstairs and the reunion that’s sure to follow.

It isn’t that he doesn’t want to see them—to feel Sirius again, to hug Molly Weasley and have her coddle him however much he protests. It isn’t that he doesn’t want home.

He just… isn’t ready. Not yet. He isn’t used to home, is still trying to wrap his fingers around the idea of familiarity. 

In the bathroom he pauses absently before the mirror. He doesn’t look sick or close to death, but still he wonders what they’ll think of him now that he’s displayed in sunlight and their gazes are clear of the haze of panic and relief. Will they recognize him at all? It’s been six months since they watched him disappear in chains from the Department of Mysteries. That’s six months for his body to hollow out and fill in and harden again, for his eyes to grow duller. Six months is so long when you’re trying to forget all that is passing outside of you. 

Harry denied his own existence so adamantly that for him no time passed at all, not really; he was standing still in some sort of purgatory, some place completely separated from the reality the rest of his world resided in. While his friends were mourning Harry thought of them only in passing—as a concept that no longer applied to his own universe.

The Harry of that existence—the first one, the real one—would be disgusted by himself now. For him, Harry tries to be disgusted, looking at himself in the mirror of Grimmauld Place. He does try, he swears it, but Harry is just tired. All he can focus on is how badly the mirror needs a good wiping down.

It happens in no more than a moment—Harry is looking at his reflection, perfectly clear headed if not fully present, and in the span of a blink his entire body is pushed away from its center. He goes fuzzy and lightheaded and oddly off kilter. The step he takes away from his reflection triggers a dizzy spell violent enough to send him teetering. His foot catches the shower rug and he’s falling backward, sending half the objects on the counter along with him.

The sound of footsteps echoing up the stairwell is immediate. The door opens. “Harry?”

His attempt at standing does nothing but send him crashing back onto his bum, after which he resigns himself to staying on the floor and swallowing his embarrassment. A pair of arms grab him under the elbows, hauling him to his feet. Harry stumbles and the man steadies him.

“Remus,” he says dumbly. 

Harry thought he might cry at the sight of Remus—or Sirius or Molly or Tonks, for that matter—but something feels incredibly detached in the actual moment. He doesn’t cry, but the wave of _ something _that crashes over him at the sight of Remus’ scarred face is so overwhelming that Harry crumples. His legs give out once again. There are too many things here with the power to make him weak.

“Merlin, Harry,” Remus says, alarmed. “Slow down. We’ll need to get you something to eat.”

“Remus,” Harry says again for loss of anything else. 

Remus hushes him. “No homecomings just yet—you’re barely upright. You’d think a night of rest might have done you some good.”

“I’m fine,” Harry says shortly, his temperament dropping on the switch of a dime. Remus flinches slightly and it belatedly occurs to Harry that it may not be the proper demeanor of a person seeing their friends and family for the first time in half a year after a close brush with death. “Sorry,” he adds in a calmer tone. Then, “Headache,” as if this explains everything.

“It’s okay,” Remus says slowly, his voice already weighted with concern—and it’s hardly been ten minutes since Harry woke. “You need to eat.”

“Sure,” Harry agrees, bidding all hope of his shower goodbye. 

He should be saying more, should be telling Remus that he missed him, that he’s glad he made it out of the Department of Mysteries safely, and then again at Malfoy Manor—both of which were situations of Harry’s own making. He should be telling Remus that he loves him because he does and can’t remember ever saying it before. The words play in his head—stirring there, perched on the tip of his tongue—and how easy it would be to say them. How easy. 

Instead, he says, “Who’s cooking?”

Remus smiles wryly. “That would be Molly.”

Harry winces, then winces twofold as Remus witnesses the first. “I’m sorry, it’s just been… a long time. It’s been a long time.” 

By which Harry means he hasn’t been loved in a long while. He hasn’t been touched the way Molly will touch him or doted over the way he will be. 

Remus’ eyes soften. “If it’s too much I’ll distract them while you make a break, how about it?”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, half-smiling. He’s gently ushered along the corridor and down the stairs. 

Harry guesses now, standing in the doorway, that the guests of Grimmauld Place must have had a discussion on ground rules. One of them being, evidently, touching. The three people in the kitchen jump to their feet, no one taking their eyes off him, and Harry can feel the restless energy making the air in the room jump. Still, no one moves to touch him. Not a single hug, no hands on his shoulder. There’s nothing but silence and some awful and glorious expression on each of their faces—unnameable but unmistakably reflected off of every corner. Something like relief, and not. Something like disbelief, and not. Something Harry can’t find a word to encompass but that speaks its name quite clearly. Something like, _ You’re a dead man risen, a ghost come home, and where in the world do we go from here? _

“Not everyone all at once,” Harry says lightly, as he’s the only one who seems willing to break open the space that has grown thick between them. The humor feels wrong coming out of his throat.

“Harry,” Hermione breathes, her face finally breaking with a smile, as if she hadn’t known it was really him until that moment. “You’re home. You’re really- goodness, sit down. Come sit, Molly will get you breakfast.” Her weight has shifted onto the balls of her feet and she seems to flutter nervously there, vibrating with inaction. She seems so beautifully familiar in that moment that Harry’s chest caves in.

Standing around the table are Hermione, Ron, and Mrs. Weasley. Behind Harry stands Remus. He could ask about Sirius but refrains. Surely he should be here—he’s undoubtedly somewhere within the walls of Grimmauld place—and his absence makes Harry’s stomach twist. What if—after everything—his godfather doesn’t want to see him?

Shaking the trail of thought Harry cautiously sits beside Ron, who between Mrs. Weasley and Hermione seems the safest option. His friend clasps him on the shoulder and greets him with a simple, “Welcome back, mate.” 

The nonchalance of his words are a relief to Harry. Despite them Ron’s voice sounds suspiciously warbled and his eyes far more damp than usual, but still it’s infinitely more comfortable than the reaction he’d be sure to receive if he’d sat beside Mrs. Weasley, or if Sirius had been waiting in the kitchen with the rest of them. 

Harry knows that he’s become jaded. 

The terse smile he sends to his friend is for no reason other than the fact that Harry thinks he owes it to him—to all of them—to be feeling something. “Good to be back,” he responds, and wants to mean it.

Breakfast feels familiar in an old, old way, with Mrs. Weasley finally deeming it appropriate to dote on him—although still keeping a fair distance and seeming pained by it. She keeps dropping food onto his plate and Harry isn’t sure of the kindest way to say that _ No, Mrs. Weasley, I’m not starving. I’ve been fed quite well, actually, and your food is making my stomach burst, _but still, her cooking tastes like a comfort he should be indulging in.

All these pieces of home keep appearing in front of Harry, and all he can think to wonder is if home should feel so separated—so very easy to take apart and label.

Home should be… a feeling. A blanket resting over his shoulders, warmth from facing the fireplace. Home should not be a jigsaw puzzle that Harry can dismantle piece by piece—or is trying to put back together, for that matter. Surely home shouldn’t feel so mechanical, should it? It shouldn’t feel like a suit of armor that he needs to piece back together before it can be slipped into, he’s sure of this.

Harry knows he’s grown distant—he knows. He was not expecting his world to match his paces away.

——

After Harry has eaten enough to placate Mrs. Weasley Remus ushers her, Hermione and Ron out of the room. Hermione stops to kiss Harry on the cheek before leaving. 

“Sorry,” Remus says as the room clears and he turns back to Harry. “I don’t want to worry anyone.” Harry nods, watching Remus as he pulls out a chair and sits perched on the edge, elbows on his knees. “How are you feeling now?” 

“Fine.” Remus looks tired. Worn. “Normal.”

“Dizziness? Lightheadedness?”

“Not since the dizzy spell in the bathroom, no.”

“Harry, this is very important—were you hit by any curses while escaping Malfoy Manor?”

“No, none.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive.”

Remus leans back into his chair. “I’ll have to do some diagnostic spells. I wish we had a more qualified mediwitch, but I’m afraid I’m the best we’ve got.” Harry’s mouth nearly waters as Remus pulls the wand out of his sleeve. Godric, he misses his wand. He misses magic. 

Remus sets the tip of his wand on the crown of Harry’s head and he feels a chill run slowly from the wand and down his body then out again. Remus’ eyebrows furrow as he pulls away, then he sweeps his wand down the length of Harry’s body without making contact, to which his eyebrows tighten further. He flicks his wand seven times, targeting points down the center of Harry’s body from the crown of his head to his hips.

“Well,” Remus says through an exhale, dropping his hand and sliding his wand back into his sleeve. Harry feels the loss like a child who’s had their candy taken away. “There’s no curse damage or traces, so that’s ruled out. Your magic levels are steady, whether they’re being used or not. Physically you’re in… perfect condition. You’re nowhere near malnourished and you don’t have any current injuries but for a few bruises.” Remus looks at Harry imploringly. “I need to know what happened there if I’m going to help you.”

Harry says, “There’s nothing to tell you.”

A stretch of tense silence seems to last forever before Remus speaks again. “I suppose it could have been anything,” he says finally, carrying on as if he’d never asked Harry at all. “—maybe you really did just need a bit of food in your system. Believe it or not, wizards are not immune to low blood-sugar.” It seems to take great effort for him to lift the corners of his lips into a smile. “You’ll tell me if there are any more symptoms?”

“I will.”

“Swear to me, Harry.”

Harry’s skin heats in the space of a second. He swallows the anger and tries not to question where it came from—speaks through gritted teeth. “I said I would.”

Remus’ eyebrows raise in surprise at the change of tone and he backpedals. “Yes, you did. I’m sorry.”

Then, as if nothing happened at all, Harry relaxes. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Remus nods slowly. “What can I do for you? Do you need anything?”

“Draco,” Harry responds immediately. “Let me see Draco.”

Remus very pointedly reveals nothing on his face. “Very well. He’ll be in the third floor guest room—first on the right.” Harry knows where the guestroom is but doesn’t bother pointing it out. Remus sends Harry with a plate of leftover breakfast food. “Try to get him to eat. Maybe you’ll have more luck than we have.”

Draco, Harry learns, has spent all of today sitting beside Narcissa Malfoy’s bed. He came looking for her the moment he woke, and upon finding her sat down and hasn’t moved since. Harry watches him for a few minutes from the doorway. He’s so still and quiet that Harry might have thought him asleep, if not for the fact that no one can be quite so stiff in their rest.

“Draco,” Harry says finally, alerting the boy to his presence and taking a hesitant step past the doorway. He isn’t sure where they stand—knowing that it’s Harry's fault this happened to her. His friend flinches slightly but doesn’t react otherwise, so Harry steps up beside him. “Draco,” he says again. 

“Come to force feed me?” he drawls without turning toward Harry. “You don’t need to bother. Both the werewolf and blood traitor already tried their hand. Maybe they’ll send in the convict next.”

“Hey,” Harry knocks Draco on the back of the head, abandoning his intent to tread delicately. The boy swears and rubs his skull. “Now isn’t the time to revert to your second-year persona, alright? We’re trying to make them _ like _you.”

“No, _ you _are,” Draco sniffs. “I couldn’t give a goblin’s arse whether your lot is fond of me.”

“_Hey, _ ” Harry hisses. “Will you knock it off?” He drops the plate on the bedside table unceremoniously, glaring. “Eat your breakfast. _ Honestly_. If I wanted to deal with a child I would have stayed with Voldemort.”

Draco sniffs and picks up the fork gingerly, tearing into the pancake with the edges to carve it into strips. “What about her?” he asks, nodding toward Narcissa and avoiding Harry's eyes. 

Harry purses his lips and feels his irritation ebb in the slightest. 

“We’ll have food ready for her when she wakes up—won’t be long now. If you want to have Remus cast a nourishing spell I’m sure he’ll be willing.”

“It’s fine,” Draco mutters, then takes a resentful bite of his pancake anyway.

“Then when you’re done pouting,” Harry says, “you can ask for me.” He turns to leave.

“Hey!” Draco protests, swiveling in his chair but not moving an inch from where he sits beside his mother. “You can’t just leave!”

Harry huffs, turning back around. “Why, Malfoy? You clearly don’t want company.”

Draco pinches the bridge of his nose and the gesture is so characteristic that Harry nearly smiles. “It’s not that, alright? I’m _ sorry_, for being a prat, just—just don’t leave me in here.” There’s a give in Draco’s face and Harry softens from the inside out, as he tends to do when Draco looks this way. He’s too lenient with him.

“Watch,” Draco says suddenly, changing the subject and smiling a bit devilishly. Harry lets him out of pure curiosity and just in front of him a chair appears with a quiet pop. Granted, it does look to be entirely constructed of pancake, but it’s undoubtedly in the shape of a hard-backed chair and surely very cushioned.

Draco’s face screws up. “I haven’t quite gotten used to the feel of it yet,” he mutters absently, then the chair transfigures twice more—it’s altogether too quick to be sure of its next forms, but Harry catches glimpses of voluminous hair and marble—before it settles with ordinary wood and a cushion for his bum.

Harry gapes. “How…?” he whispers, circling the chair.

Draco slips a wand out of his sleeve and holds it up for Harry to inspect. “My mum’s. Her magic is similar to mine, but it’s still feeling me out.”

Harry continues to gawk and Draco rolls his eyes, offering it, so Harry takes it gingerly. The zing of magic up his wrist is very clearly not pleased to feel him, but the unpleasantness of it is so entirely drowned by awe that Harry doesn’t notice.

“Fantastic,” he whispers. He looks up at Draco. “Are you going to…”

“Give it back?” Draco finishes, “not yet. I’ll let her think she lost it in the battle, dropped it before we apparated, whatever. I just want a few days with it to myself—then I’ll return it.”

“_Lumos, _” Harry murmurs, and the light sputters in and out a few times before it stays on. His face breaks into a grin. He feels like flying.

“And yes,” Draco says smiling, “I’ll share.”

Harry forgets all about his intentions of asking Draco about his father, about if he’ll be okay, about being upset with Harry—if he is at all. 

_ Magic. _

———

The one thing he doesn’t forget about—or at least remembers eventually—is Dumbledore.

“I already asked,” Draco says. “Multiple times. Separately to Mrs. Weasley, Professor Lupin, _ and _Granger. Everyone says he’s off on some trip and no one knows how to reach him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Harry mutters. “There’s no way he wouldn’t leave someone with a way to reach him.”

Draco shrugs. “You can give it a go if you’d like. Otherwise, it seems like we’re waiting.”

“But Snape can lead him right to us!”

“And so can my Dark Mark if I let my guard down too long. So can you, with your creepy sight-seeing into each other’s heads. There’re a ton of ways he could find us, but Dumbledore is still the secret-keeper. We’re safe here.” This is the reason Harry filled Draco in on absolutely everything. He’s smarter than Harry—and far more rational in situations like these.

“So we just wait?”

“So we just wait,” Draco confirms, “and easier you than me. You should be off spending time with your friends. You can come back to see me when my mother wakes up.”

“I’ll just stay here,” Harry says, hoping Draco won’t question it.

The bewildered stare Harry receives proves the wish moot. “Here? Aren’t you all about the power of friendship?”

“Hermione and Ron left, I think, Mrs. Weasley too. Sirius is off hiding somewhere, probably told he isn’t allowed to come see me. Besides,” Harry leans sideways to bump his shoulder against Draco’s, “you are my friend.”

“Not bloody likely,” Draco says, and Harry can hear the smothered smile in his voice. Harry smiles too.

Draco is his friend and all his others have left Grimmauld Place—both of these things are true. So Harry settles comfortably into the explanation and doesn’t consider what he might do if they were all in the next room over, waiting for Harry to come back to them. He ignores the begging question: if he has even come back at all.

He stays with Draco the rest of the day. Although his efforts at coaxing him out of the bedroom prove fruitless he does manage to at least drag him away from her bedside. He disappears downstairs once to gather lunch and meets Remus in the kitchen, skillfully avoiding any conversation past his muttered, “Here for sandwiches.”

Around dusk Remus appears in the room to run some spells over Narcissa. “She’s still in fine condition,” he tells Draco, whose entire body seems to deflate with relief. “It was a strong stunner. My guess is she’ll be out for another night but not long into tomorrow.”

“Will you cast a nourishment charm?” Harry asks, because he knows Draco is too prideful to request it himself. He would rather have his own go with her stolen wand, probably exhausting himself half to death in the process of trying to wrangle her magic into obedience. 

He pauses at the doorway on his way out. “Try to get some rest tonight. Neither of you have been stable nearly long enough to get comfortable.”

The boys agree. It still takes another thirty minutes to force Draco down a floor to the spare room and into bed, but only moments after his head hits the pillow for him to pass out cold.

An hour after Draco’s breathing has evened out and Harry still hasn’t drawn an inch closer to sleep he slips out from under the duvet, grabbing the night robe off his post and wrapping it around himself on his way to the door. 

The hinges squeal as he pulls them open and he winces in the bed’s general direction as Draco turns over in his sleep. A few seconds pass in which Harry stands in place waiting for Draco’s breathing to once again even out, then he slips through the gap in the door and pulls it shut behind him. Harry asks himself where he would be if he was Sirius Black then smiles—because if he was Sirius, he would be waiting for Harry Potter.

Sure enough, when Harry rounds the corner he’s met with the sight of his godfather, sitting in the drawing room and sipping on a glass of firewhiskey. Sirius’ face nearly breaks in half with the grin Harry receives, the skin around his eyes caving into creases. He looks just the same as when Harry last saw him—maybe a bit more tired.

He stands and holds out his arms, and Harry steps gratefully into them without a moment’s thought. “Harry,” Sirius says, grinning into the top of his head. “Harry, Harry, Harry.” He grabs both his godson’s shoulders and holds him at arm's length, eyes critical. “Let’s see. Well-fed, strong—I hope Voldemort wasn’t pampering you, Harry. In _ desperate _ need of a haircut, but that’s to be expected after six months in captivity.”

Harry pushes him half-heartedly away and tries to wipe the smile off his face without success. “‘Hello’ to you too.”

Sirius is still beaming at him through his creased eyes. “I figure you’ve had enough handling with care.”

“And Godric knows it,” Harry agrees, stepping back completely to sit on the couch. “Who knew being sheltered could be so draining?”

“Plenty of people, easy—just name any fugitive.”

Sirius doesn’t make it a fanfare. He doesn’t put Harry under the pressure of figuring out how to properly come back from the dead, and he doesn’t ask him to talk about it. In fact, Sirius seems content to let Harry pretend it never happened at all—which is exactly what he needs. Harry catches the playful glint in Sirius’ eye and it’s clear in an instant; his godfather is back and Harry is home.

Sirius summons a second glass from the mantlepiece and fills it with liquor. Harry raises his eyebrows as Sirius offers it to him. “You’re sixteen,” he says in poorly feigned defense. “I don’t need to pretend to feel guilty for it anymore.”

Harry snorts, taking the glass. “Sixteen. I didn’t even realize.”

“Well, I can’t imagine Voldemort baked you a cake for your birthday.”

“Not quite,” Harry says. Sirius’ face goes sober, though it only lasts a second before Harry hurries the conversation along. “Why didn’t I see you today?”

“They’re afraid I’ll treat you like a human being,” Sirius says wryly, following the subject change easily. He makes a show of straightening up in his seat. “Harry, do you know what proper men do when they come back from war?”

Harry laughs a little, mirroring his posture. “What?”

A shit-eating grin takes up Sirius’ face. “They drown their sorrow.” He winks at Harry. “Bottoms up.”

Down goes Sirius’ glass; down goes Harry’s. He all but chokes at the burn and Sirius laughs. “First sip is the worst,” he tells him, and by the time Harry has set his glass down again both have refilled.

“Are they right to be treating me so differently?” Harry asks when he’s gathered himself.

Sirius hums, settling back into the couch. “Do you feel different?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“Not at all. Do you feel as different as everyone is acting like you are?”  
“Sometimes,” he admits. “Most of today I’ve felt… weird. Like I’m borrowing this life and when I wake up from it I’ll be back where I was. The most normal I felt all day was when I was with Draco.” Harry pauses for a second. “And now,” he adds.

Sirius smiles wryly. “The people you feel normal in front of are the people who haven’t treated you like you’ve changed.” He tilts his glass toward Harry. “You haven’t gone anywhere. You’re still my godson, and I’m one of the few who isn’t trying to fool you out of that fact.”

“But I’m…” Harry searches for a more fitting word but can’t find one. “-different. Angrier, sometimes.”

Sirius laughs. “Do you think I spent eleven years in Azkaban and came out the same person I went in as?”

“I suppose not,” Harry says tentatively.

“I’ve been where you are. Everyone tip-toeing around you, waiting for you to lose it.” At this his face twists a bit bitterly then vanishes behind his glass. He downs the rest before leaning toward Harry conspiratorially. “Don’t let them convince you you’re damaged. Promise me.”

Harry nods. “I promise.”

“We aren’t so different,” Sirius says lightly, eyes glinting with humor. “Outlaws. A little selfish and a little reckless.”

Harry snorts. “Outlaws?”

“Oh yes,” Sirius nods. “Grimmauld Place is just our… slightly roomier holding cell.”

Harry has forgotten how good it feels to smile. “Couldn’t choose a better cellmate,” he grins, then raises his glass once more. A burn chases the second glass of firewhiskey down his throat. Warms his belly.

So perhaps this is what it means to be human. Becoming and unbecoming. Dying in prison cells. Burning alive and rising from the ashes. 

“Cheers,” Sirius echoes, and does the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be safe. be kind. be responsible.  
i'm here to talk if anyone needs anything at all <3
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	15. Apology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope everyone is continuing to be safe and sound💞 sending love and support to all

The sunlight streaming through the far window is making itself known by stabbing Harry in the temples repeatedly.

He moans, turning over and pulling the pillow over his head which feels as if it’s being steadily squeezed in an abnormally sized fist. His stomach flips. When someone yanks the covers down he’s outraged enough to let out a muffled protest but not enough to bother stirring.

“Get up.” Of course it’s Sirius. “I already let you sleep in.”

“Prick,” Harry mumbles.

“Up,” he orders, and this time pulls the pillow out of Harry’s grasp. He nearly cries at the loss but deems the fight futile and instead turns over to squint at Sirius’ form above him. Memories of the night before resurface, albeit in blurry flashes. 

His godfather raises his eyebrows pointedly at the ruffled sheets on the opposite side of Harry’s bed and Harry realizes he must have made his drunken way back to Draco the night before. He groans, turning his face into the mattress. “I’m too hungover to talk about Draco Malfoy.”

Sirius raises his hands above his head in a gesture of surrender, his eyes laughing. “Your wish is mine.” He digs around the inside pocket of his robes and tosses Harry the vial he retrieves. “This will help,” he promises. 

Harry makes a weak attempt to catch it but lifts his hand about five seconds later than he needs to. It lands beside Harry on the bed and he snatches it up, pops the cork with one hand, and swallows it in one go before dropping his head back to the mattress and closing his eyes. He feels the world merge back to its usual state in slow motion, like getting drunk in reverse. “Thanks,” he mutters.

“Now get your arse out of bed. Breakfast is in the kitchen.”

“What crowd?”

“Molly, Remus, and Hermione.”

_ Bearable, _Harry thinks, and sits up blearily. “I’ll be down after I’ve showered.”

The shower may be the greatest thing to happen to him since arriving at Grimmauld place.

There’s a clean set of clothes lying on the bed when he exits the bathroom that he changes into gratefully. He can’t explain why the smell of them feels like a memory in and of itself, but it falls like a stone to the bottom of his stomach and he can’t for the life of him puzzle out whether it’s a weighty dread or a deep comfort; lately they feel much the same. So he shelves it, vows to think about it later although he probably won’t, and the pile grows as he makes his way down to the kitchen for breakfast. 

The first person to turn around is Hermione. Harry had the slightest of hopes after his comfortable—albeit drunken—night with Sirius that the broken ice may translate to the other Order members, but he isn’t granted any such luck. Today looking at Hermione feels less like a dream-state and more like a deep-seated relief. The familiarity of her bushy hair and slim features is enough to warm his chest, but the ability to form the proper words still seems far out of reach.

“Good morning,” she says, face kind yet hesitant, as if Harry might turn her away. There’s a prickle of guilt in his stomach. He says good morning in return. Tries to meet her eyes and doesn’t.

This morning Mrs. Weasley seems less fraught and more faltering, bustling around the kitchen in her usual manner but more cautious in her contact with Harry. Still she smiles at him warmly and gently urges him to eat, and despite her apprehensiveness Harry can tell that she’s trying very hard not to be afraid of him. He isn’t sure if that makes the fact that she is better or worse. 

He thanks her as she hands him a mug of tea, studying her face clinically as she looks at him, even as she turns away. He watches the way she smiles, the deepened crow feet at the corner of her eyes, the strained pull to her cheeks; something in the way he said it must have made her look at him like that, but he can’t understand what.

“Where’s Ron?” Harry tries for conversation. Remus has already disappeared from the room, leaving Harry to Mrs. Weasley and Hermione and their uncomfortable treatment. 

Hermione clears her throat and Mrs. Weasley jumps. “At the Burrow with the rest of them,” she answers belatedly, huffing, “packing at the very last moment, as usual.”

At Harry’s blank look Hermione explains. “Today is the last day of holiday. We’ll be going back to Hogwarts tomorrow.” She sounds almost pained to say it, as if she was hoping Harry would piece the timeline together himself. 

Something lodges itself in the back of Harry’s throat.

“You won’t be going back, of course,” Mrs. Weasley assures him quickly, as if that’s a comfort rather than a blow. “We haven’t even been able to tell Albus you’ve come back yet, and you’re in no place to be shipped back to school.”

“Where is Dumbledore, then?” Harry asks tensely. Beside him Hermione flinches subtly at the change of tone.

“We don’t know,” Mrs. Weasley says placatingly, “but he’ll be back soon enough with the term starting.”

A buzzing starts up beneath his skin and Harry wants to push. “So no one is at all concerned about him?” 

“Harry-” Hermione tries to interject. He talks right over her.

“So until Dumbledore comes back—because not one of you bothered to ask where he planned on going—I’m going to stay stuck here? What about Draco?”

“We can’t make any decisions without Albus.”

“We’re all slaves to Dumbledore now, then?”

“Harry!” Hermione snaps. When this gives Harry pause she continues, tone quieter but feeling distinctly like a scolding. “Quit this right now. You have no right to be acting this way.”

Harry hears Sirius’ voice from behind. “No,” he agrees, “he doesn’t.”

These two are the ones who shut him up. His skin grew steadily hotter as the conversation went on and now he feels it cool rapidly, the buzzing diminishing itself altogether. He blinks a few times, the interaction playing back like he’d watched it all from above. “I’m sorry,” he says, no power behind the words because he feels as if he’s apologizing for someone else.

“It’s perfectly alright,” Sirius says, a hand grasping Harry’s shoulder as he sits beside him. The two others echo the sentiment, but Harry is sure Sirius is the only one who entirely means it.

That… wasn’t Harry. Couldn’t have been Harry.

A weighted silence descends upon the room.

“Narcissa is awake,” Mrs. Weasley remarks off-handedly, breaking it. There’s an underlying tension in her tone that Harry is sure has no connection to the previous conversation. While Mrs. Weasley is one of the least likely to be unwelcoming to guests, she doesn’t have much reason to be happy about the blood supremacist who has taken up residence on the second floor.

Harry stands. “I’d better go see them,” he says, both desperate to talk to Narcissa and Draco together and grateful for a reason to escape the tense atmosphere of the room.

Hermione grabs his hand quickly, holding on in a vice-like grip as if he might try to make a run for it. “I- I wouldn’t,” Hermione says haltingly, then corrects herself more surely. “You don’t want to.”

“She’s angry with me,” he says, letting her stop him, although it comes out less a question than a statement.

“She blames you, Harry,” she says, her expression pained, “and I’m not saying that she’s right to, or that I agree with her, but… I understand why she would.”

A silence.

“Draco?” Harry asks finally, not responding to her statement.

“He’s been with her all morning. You’ll have to wait until he comes out.”

Sirius clears his throat from beside Harry, where he’s picked up the day’s issue of the _Daily Prophet _and began skimming it. “Which may not be any time soon without you to coax him back to the world of the living.”

“Surely someone else can try,” Harry says, exasperation leaking into his voice.

“We have a convict, a werewolf, a muggle-born, and a blood-traitor,” Sirius points out. “None of us are the sort he’d be willing to listen to.”

There’s a bitter tone underlying his statement, although it’s clear Sirius is doing his best to suppress it for Harry’s sake. Knowing that Draco has proved himself decent enough for Harry to save must have convinced Sirius well enough to be civil, but it’s going to take more than good faith to overpower decades of resentment for Pureblood families—particularly families like the Malfoys. Harry can’t hold that against him.

Hermione stands. “I should be going, too—all my things are at the Burrow. I just came to say goodbye to you, Harry. We’ll be back for summer, of course, and you’ll be much more comfortable with everything by then. Things will be… easier.”

“Right,” Harry responds slowly.

“And we’ll write you. You can respond, if you want. I’m sure Luna, Neville, and Ginny will want to as well.” She stops and gnaws on her lip, looking unsure. “We’re not… abandoning you. I don’t want you to think so.”

Harry doesn’t know how to respond. Should he hug her? Smile? Reassure her? What is the proper way to say goodbye to your best friend when you feel like a ghost? He doesn’t have the words or the heart to tell her that writing to him now is like writing a dead man. 

“I know,” he says. “I know you aren't.”

Because Hermione and Ron would never abandon Before-Harry. 

She waits for a moment, giving Harry the chance to stand and give a proper goodbye, but he stays sitting. Eventually she just smiles sadly, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, Harry.” Then she hurries out of the room and a few moments later Harry hears the telltale flare of the Floo.

Harry manages a singular bite of food before his stomach heaves and in a span of a few seconds he’s flown from the kitchen to the bathroom and fallen to the floor in front of the loo. Then Harry is vomiting up the single bite of breakfast, the half-cup of tea he’s had, and every bit of bile in his stomach.

He’s throwing up yet hardly feels nauseous. It doesn’t feel like sickness so much as his body rejecting the concept of food altogether, as if the thought of nourishment itself has made him sick. He almost agrees with the instinct, almost begs to rid himself of it. His mouth tastes sour, like illness, like he himself is a sickness for allowing this.

“Merlin’s beard, Harry,” Sirius says from the doorway, though Harry doesn’t trust himself to turn his head from the toilet to look at him just yet. “This is why I gave you a hangover cure.”

Harry lifts his head between retches, spitting into the bowl. “I don’t think this is the firewhiskey,” he croaks. Sirius doesn’t respond, but Harry can sense his fretting from where he’s kneeling and can almost hear the murmured conversation he’ll surely have with Remus once Harry is out of earshot.

His train of thought is interrupted by another bout of vomiting. He feels Sirius’ hands in his hair, which has grown much too long, pulling it out of his face. “We’ll have to trim it up later,” Sirius sighs, and waits.

———

Another check-up in the kitchen, this time with Sirius standing off to the side and radiating anxious energy. Harry is sitting on the table-top with his feet resting on the bench and Remus standing in front of him.

“Any other symptoms?”

“I’m lightheaded. Weak and shaky.”

“Any more nausea?”

“No, my stomach feels fine.”

“Perhaps food poisoning?” Sirius suggests hopefully from the corner.

“I haven’t eaten anything someone else hasn’t.”

“He’s right,” Remus mutters. He sweeps his wand along the length of Harry’s body, much the same as he did the previous morning. “Still no traces of magic.”

Sirius makes a sudden noise in the back of his throat and both Harry and Remus turn to him questioningly. “Still no traces of other’s magic, yes?”

Remus nods bemusedly. “Right. No curses, but it doesn't seem like any ordinary muggle illness, either.”

“It’s his magic,” Sirius says as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “You haven’t had your wand since the Department of Mysteries—have you done any accidental magic?”

Harry hasn’t. The only times he would have been desperate enough for his magic to take control were the times he was too weakened to draw on it at all. By the time he’d strengthened he was perfectly safe in Malfoy Manor—frustrated, bored, and restless, but never in immediate danger. He shakes his head in response to Sirius.

“You’re blocked—you need to loosen up your magic.”

Sirius says _ magic _and Harry’s skin begins buzzing at the mere thought of it. He’s started to recognize it for what it is—his magic rising to the surface, itching for a conduit out. Without a wand, though, Harry is all but useless. He’s never had the control necessary for even wordless magic, let alone wandless. 

The only wandless magic he’s ever managed has been of undistilled rage or unbridled fear—seemingly teleporting onto the roof of his school while running from Dudley and his friends, for example, or blowing up his Aunt Marge—and in neither of those instances did Harry have any semblance of control. His wandless magic depends on a complete _ loss _of control, not the opposite. 

“I need a wand,” he says immediately, hopefully, possibly with the most vigour he’s displayed for anything since arriving at Grimmauld Place. 

“You can borrow mine for now,” Remus agrees. “We can’t get you anywhere near a wandmaker.” A grin splits Harry’s face. He doesn’t need a new wand, to hell with it. He already has a wand, and to choose another—or let another choose him, rather—feels almost like a betrayal. To borrow another wizard’s, though—the thought is thrilling. _ Any _way out is enough for him and enough for his magic; neither is in any position to be picky.

“No,” Sirius says firmly. 

Harry’s head snaps toward Sirius. “What?”

His godfather scrubs a hand down his face, probably expecting a fight, and sits down on the bench beside Harry’s feet. “Your wand is gone, probably for good. You shouldn’t be using a stand-in. You need your magic desperate to do wandless magic the first time, and if you show it an easier way out it has no reason to be.”

“You’re not suggesting wandless magic,” Harry says disbelievingly.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

Harry shakes his head vehemently. Asking Harry to do wandless magic is no different than denying him magic completely. “I don’t have the control for it.”

“Perhaps your magic simply hasn’t wanted it bad enough before.”

Harry feels it surge, maybe proving Sirius’ point, although he definitely won’t be admitting it. He stands, pushing his way past Remus and toward the doorway. “I have more important things to be concerned with right now,” he says, putting sincere effort into keeping his voice level.

“Like what?” Sirius retorts, shooting it at Harry’s back. “Befriending a blood supremacist?”

Harry turns around burning, furious at his godfather for even daring to spit on Draco’s image in front of Harry. The ignorance and the assumption of the statement is enough to make his temper flare in an instant. “Don’t you dare,” he hisses at Sirius as Remus steps into his path preemptively. Harry doesn’t know where this anger is coming from—surely not from himself, surely he isn’t capable—but he finds it doesn’t much matter. It’s blinding. “Don’t you say a _ thing _about Draco in front of me.”

“And what will you do if I decide to? Hex me? Curse me? You said it yourself—you’re powerless this way. Not only were you stupid enough to all but hand yourself over to Voldemort, but you let him make you _ weak. _” Harry lunges and Remus gets his arms around his waist. Harry kicks, thrashes, he’s seeing red, losing his breath to the raw need to hurt Sirius.

He knows this isn’t him—not Before-Harry. Before-Harry would never dream of hurting Sirius, not for anything, but he isn’t Before-Harry. He’s just Harry, and Harry knows anger. He knows rage. If anyone were to ask him now, in this very moment, if he wanted Before back, he would swear he doesn’t.

Before-Harry was weak.

There’s a deafening crash and Harry is snapped back to himself as every glass dish in the kitchen breaks. The plates on the table shatter in place; the dishes charmed into washing themselves fall into the sink and become nothing more than a pile of glass shards; the cauldron hung over the fire fractures down the middle.

Remus’ arms around Harry slacken and he breaks out of them to turn toward Sirius, this time not to hurt him but to frantically apologize, but Sirius doesn’t look upset in the slightest. He’s grinning triumphantly. Harry freezes dumbfoundedly. “Can’t do wandless magic, huh?”

“That’s-” Harry has to stop for breath. He’s angry now, but this is a different anger. A human anger. “That was a _complete_ loss of control! I could have _hurt _you, or- or caved the walls in or something, _anything_-”

“But you did it,” Remus says flatly behind him, maybe shocked. “You really- Merlin, Harry. If you can pull out that sort of power now, you can learn to control it later.”

“I _ can’t_-” Harry insists, turning to face Remus now.

“This is coming from the wizard who mastered a Patronus at age thirteen.”

Harry doesn’t know what else to say. He feels Sirius grasp his shoulder from behind. “I’m sorry about that,” he says, smile kinder now. “Anger has always driven you best.” Harry doesn’t say what he’s sure Sirius is thinking—that it has more power over him now than it ever has before.

Sirius squeezes his shoulder tightly. “You’d better go have a try at Draco.”

Harry doesn’t recoil from the touch. He does, however, glance around the kitchen hesitantly, taking in the wreckage of glass. “We’ll handle it,” Remus assures him, then nods at the doorway. “Go.”

So Harry does—and he feels perfectly fine.

———

Narcissa is awake when Harry raps on the doorframe cautiously. When she catches sight of him her eyes are sharp and unkind. “Leave,” she demands. Harry expected her to verbally attack him, to guilt him or to chew him out, but she doesn’t seem interested in wasting the energy—just quietly and inwardly furious.

Harry can’t read Draco’s face when he turns from his place beside her to look at him, the same chair he’d sat in all the previous day. “Later, Harry,” he says quietly.

———

Draco finds Harry in the library, curled up in a window seat that’s been spelled invisible from the outside along with the rest of the house. Harry doesn’t turn to look at him, but Draco nudges the boy’s feet until he pulls them closer to his chest, clearing a space for Draco to sit beside him. He leans against the opposite wall, facing Harry, their legs almost touching.

“She’s back asleep now,” he says quietly, “just ordinary sleep. All of the stun damage has passed.”

Harry keeps his gaze on the window. It isn’t much of a view—a narrow alley between the backside of Grimmauld place and the building directly behind them—but he can see the sky. It’s hard for Harry to believe that the last time he’d been outside was only a week ago. That day with Draco feels like a different lifetime entirely, and Harry misses the sky as if it were.

It isn’t snowy here, just overcast and drizzling. He also misses the smell of the rain.

“She hates me,” Harry states flatly.

“Not hate,” Draco says, shaking his head. “She’s just confused. I mean, we both are.” Draco’s face gives, just slightly.

“I’m so sorry.” As Harry says it he thinks that it’s the first apology at Grimmauld place he’s truly meant. Whether he’s apologizing for Draco’s grief or his own part in it Harry isn’t sure, but one way or another he knows he means it.

The boy folds into himself slightly like he’s trying to protect the parts of him easiest to harm and Harry reaches across the space for his hand. Draco doesn’t cry and Harry realizes he’s never seen it before—not genuine tears, anyway. Maybe feigned tears after a scratch from Buckbeak, but none that matter. Draco doesn’t cry, but the way he is now seems almost worse. “I was so sure,” he almost whispers.

Harry drops his head forward so it rests on Draco’s knee where his legs cross with Harry’s. “For what it’s worth,” Harry says gently. “I don’t think he betrayed you.”

Draco sniffles. “What?”

“He didn’t do anything more than stun your mum, right?”

Draco drops his head onto Harry’s knee, mirroring him like they’re huddling for warmth. Maybe they are. Maybe there’s so much to make them run cold. “He took her down.”

“After we’d both reached her.”

Draco is silent for moments that seem to stretch on minutes. “I was so sure he would come,” he says again, quiet enough that if their heads weren’t resting beside each other’s Harry might not have heard them.

“What he did is more important,” Harry says. “All of you are safer this way. He’s just- he’s just too close to him.” He’s quiet for a long time, then continues. “Either way, Draco, I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”

He huffs softly. “You're not the one who stunned her.”

But wasn’t he? Wasn’t he the reason she was in that foyer, that Draco’s father was forced to make a choice, that they had to leave in the first place? Nearly every awful thing that has ever happened to the people around him can be traced in a direct line back to himself.

Harry says, “I’m just grateful she’s okay.”

“Me too,” says Draco. “And you. And me.”

“And us,” Harry agrees.

“You know-” Draco says hesitantly. “-you know she’s the one who tricked you into the Department of Mysteries, right?”

“I… suspected.”

“And yet,” here, Draco lifts his head, “you chose to save her.”

Harry doesn’t mimic him. He doesn’t know if he can look. “I didn’t,” he says. “I chose to save you.”

Harry thinks about Hermione’s bushy hair and Ron’s clap on his back. Their easy, quiet love for him. Their loyalty. The way Before-Harry loved them.

Here’s a secret: Draco, in an unbelievably short amount of time, has become Harry’s best friend. Another: Harry isn’t sorry for it.

———

Three days pass during which Harry does nothing but try to be normal with varying successes. Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the students leave for Hogwarts, not to be seen again until summer. Draco stays. Narcissa recovers fully and takes to the third floor sitting room where she can read by the fire and not be bothered. She still sticks her nose up at all in the house but Draco, but no one expects more from her.

Harry knows they’re discussing him when he’s out of sight. Sometimes he hears the conversations, but more often only feels the weight of them when he enters a room. All of these unspoken things sit heavy around him, all of the questions they’re afraid to ask and must know that Harry won’t answer. All of their anxiety. Their fear.

“He isn’t himself,” Molly is saying. Harry can hear them from the top of the stairs, even with their tones hushed and without the assistance of a _ sonorous. _For a house so tense with unspoken words they’re awfully careless with the ones that they do.

“He’s traumatized, for heaven’s sake,” Remus responds, “of course he isn’t.”

“It’s just that-” she stops, then begins again. “Don’t you wonder? Shouldn’t we be asking?”

“What help can that possibly do? If we had a mind healer things would be different, but there’s none trusted enough to allow near the Order at all, let alone into our headquarters. We can’t help him, _ especially _ not by dredging up all that he’s survived in the past six months.”

“Can you truly say he’s survived it?”

Remus lets out a deep sigh. “All I can say is that the boy we mourned is standing in front of us, and that is a miracle all on its own.”

A long silence, and when she speaks again her voice is choked and teary. “I miss him.”

Harry flinches. He doesn’t truly feel the pang of it until Remus responds, “I know.”

Exactly one week after Harry and Draco’s escape from the Manor things stir up.

“Harry, do you know the name Piers Polkiss?”

Harry has just come from the library where he was doing not much of anything, but in Draco’s company. He’d heard Sirius calling him from all the way up the stairs, only to find him and Sirius in the drawing room, sitting on the couch like two parents about to have a _ difficult conversation._

Remus lives at Grimmauld place. Harry hasn’t asked.

He looks at Sirius sharply, freezing in the midst of sitting down. “Piers Polkiss?” Sirius nods, eyebrows knit tightly together. Harry straightens back up stiffly. “He was Dudley’s friend growing up. He lived down the street.” 

“Did you two spend time together? Were you friends?”

A deep sense of unease settles over Harry. “The only time we spent together was when he was with Dudley and I ended up with them, and we definitely were _ not _friends.” He leaves out the more intricate details of he and Piers’ interactions, namely the ones involving Harry’s hands held behind his back and Dudley’s right hook. No need, really.

Sirius sinks back into the couch with a hand massaging the bridge of his nose and Harry turns to Remus for explanation. The man looks more collected if not less stressed, and explains. “Piers was found dead in the street of Privet Drive last night.”

Harry’s entire bloodstream runs cold.

“Dead?”

Remus tilts his head toward the ceiling with tightened lips. “Dead and all over the muggle papers—’Young man found deceased, no apparent injury or cause of death.’”

“So the Killing Curse,” Harry says blankly.

“Yes,” Sirius says. “The Killing Curse—but if you didn’t care for Piers, weren’t even friends, we can’t tell _ why _Voldemort would kill him, of all people. Why not your family?”

“In all fairness,” Harry mutters whilst finally sitting down, “I didn’t care much for them either.”

“And how is he to know that?”

There’s no way to explain to them how Voldemort would know without explaining much more about his time in captivity, and Harry isn’t ready to cross that line. He isn’t sure he’ll ever be ready to cross that line. Harry is replaying the few minutes that Voldemort spent in his head and the clear memories he witnessed. Memories in which Dudley and Piers chased him around Privet Drive, the memories in which Piers held Harry in place while Dudley beat him, or joined in on the beating, or simply stood back and laughed. He’s replaying the rage he could feel like a storm about to break as Voldemort pulled away.

Rage like fury on Harry’s behalf; rage like murderous, like a complete lack of control, like Voldemort would do anything to punish their actions. Harry felt rage then that he hasn’t been able to make sense of since it hit him like a wall, knocked the breath out of his chest and sent him flailing.

Harry has never been much good at self-control. He’s never known how to manage his temper or his impulses and he’s no stranger to fury, but he’s never felt anything like what he felt from Voldemort then. Now Harry has disappeared, and he can’t imagine that was at all helpful in mediating it.

Piers was an act of revenge, surely, an act of spite as well, but if Voldemort’s aim was to punish Harry, the people present during his childhood would be his very last choice.

Piers isn’t a punishment for Harry—Piers murder was something else entirely. A burst of temper, yes. An easy target for his emotions, surely.

But then what? A gift? An act of kindness, however skewed Voldemort’s definition of it may be?

What, then? 

An apology?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	16. Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the last chapter:  
Harry continued to feel sick, and Sirius had the thought to force accidental magic out of Harry and see if a magical build up was causing his illness. He succeeded, and Harry showed a huge amount of power.  
Narcissa woke up and is still holding a grudge against Harry. Harry continues to eavesdrop and becomes progressively more upset at the amount of talk continuing behind his back in Grimmauld place.  
Finally, Harry finds out that Piers Polkiss was found dead, murdered at the hands of the killing curse in cold blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hello! alas, i am alive and well
> 
> i took a long trip (about two months) and intended to write much more than i did. but i'm home now, back to my usual writing schedule, and here with a long chapter!
> 
> the world is incredibly messy and hectic right now. to my black readers, i hope you're being gentle with yourself and taking care of your mental health amidst this fight. to my non-black readers, i hope you are continuing to stand alongside them.
> 
> to all of my american readers, hang in there. 
> 
> and to everyone, please continue to take all precautions and stay safe. the virus is still here and it doesn't seem likely to disappear any time soon. keep each other safe and just... don't be stupid.
> 
> i love and appreciate you all. much love, t

Nagini is following a figure eight around Harry’s ankles, tightening her coils around him when he tries to pull a foot out to sit down. He’s been standing for fifteen minutes, waiting for her to tire out.

“Nagini, get off,” he sighs, wiggling his toes because they’re the only appendage below his knees left able to be wiggled. “Hey, dumbass, my legs are falling asleep.”

This makes her pause, not untangling herself but at least stopping to lift her head and hiss in offense. “Just let me _ sit, _and you can wind to your heart’s content.” She hisses lowly in acknowledgement and his body is suddenly rid of the snake.

It’s as he shakes out his tingling ankles that he realizes there’s nowhere to sit. Or stand, or step. They _ are _nowhere—an expanse of empty space. A few feet from him Nagini has fallen asleep in a tight coil, apparently worn out by her clinging, and she’s the only solid object Harry can see in any direction. “Nagini?” he questions, but she goes on sleeping.

Bizarre.

Harry thinks, _ I came here to sit, so let’s sit. _ It’s unnerving, standing on a ground he can’t perceive, but he shrugs and crouches, testing the ground behind him with the heels of his palms before leaning back to lie down. It’s solid as earth.

Predictably, Harry falls anyway.

He lands in Grimmauld place, sitting rod-stiff upright in his bed beside Draco, who’s just yelped. “Holy shit, Potter!”

Harry turns to Draco, coming back to himself. The boy has one hand wrapped around his upper arm, staring at Harry like he’s just flown. “Erm,” Harry says.

“What the fuck?”

Harry blinks slowly. “What did I do?”

“You shocked me,” Draco says dumbly, still looking at Harry like he’d deeply and personally offended him. “What was that for?”

“I don’t…” Harry blinks. “I don’t remember anything?”

“You wouldn’t, would you,” Draco snipes a little. Harry doesn’t take it personally—he’s learned that Draco is very much _ not _ a morning person. “Grabbed me in your sleep or something.”

“It was probably just static electricity,” Harry mutters, swinging his legs out of bed.

Draco shouts at Harry’s back on his way to the bathroom. “What does that even mean?”

“Muggle thing,” Harry calls hastily over his shoulder, then shuts the bathroom door firmly between him and Malfoy.

Thing is, it probably _ could _have been, if Harry didn’t feel so electrified himself. There’s his magic buzzing at the surface of his skin, that familiar itch for a way out, but something deeper, too. There’s some unknown element a few layers below what he’s come to recognize as magic, something driving it to the surface. It feels less like buzzing and more like electrocution. Like clouds rolling. Like biding time.

He swallows and focuses on breathing. Doesn’t move again until he hears Draco shuffling about the room mumbling something about _ stat ickle tricity _then the bedroom door shutting soundly behind him.

He tries to remember what he dreamt about but can’t.

———

“It’s New Year’s Eve tomorrow,” Remus says at lunch that day.

Harry blinks. “I’d forgotten.”

“I don’t expect keeping track of holidays to be your first priority right now,” he says kindly. Harry feels an itch of guilt as he realizes they skipped right over Christmas in the mess of Harry’s return. 

“Guess not,” Harry shrugs, ignoring the twinge of _ something _in the back of his head. “So what—are there plans?”

“If you want there to be,” Remus says easily. “If not it’s just us.”

“Just us doing what, exactly?”

Remus shrugs. “Drinking. Music. New Year’s wishes. The usual celebrations.”

Harry doesn’t say that he’s never really experienced the ‘usual’ celebrations. New Year’s Eve at the Dursley’s was one of the holidays Harry was expected to stay out of sight for the evening. If he wasn’t there he’d always been at Hogwarts, which was unique in its holiday celebrations. 

“Yeah,” Harry nods. “I’ll think about it.”

“Just take your time and let me know. There’s no pressure at all.”

———

Draco and Harry are in the library, legs drawn up on the couch and leaning against opposite arm rests. “What are you going to do about your mark?” Harry asks. “Can’t he feel you?”

Draco shrugs, picking at the fading couch cushion. “I can feel him, mostly. It burns a lot. Ordinarily if he tried hard enough he could tap into me, maybe see my surroundings, but the _ Fidelius _ charm helps block that, I think.”

“It hurts?”

Draco’s eyebrows furrow like it burns just to think about. “Only sometimes. Only when he’s especially angry.”

“It sounds like my scar,” Harry murmurs.

“I think the magic is somewhat similar, actually. Your curse scar is just more personal.” Draco shakes his head and changes the subject. “Speaking of—what about you? Any freaky mind stuff?”

“No, actually. I’ve been dreaming a lot about Nagini, but I haven’t seen _ him _yet. My scar hasn’t so much as twinged, either.”

His tattoo has. Sometimes at night it will itch like it would when Voldemort was beside him, like it’s begging for him to touch it. It never hurts, but neither has his scar—not for a long time. And, anyway, there’s no way for him to tell Draco that. Sometimes Harry thinks he can feel him, somewhere within the magic that so often taunts him.

“That’s good, then,” Draco says idly. Harry hums in agreement, and for the first time since he was a kid—still a first or second year, before he’d fully come to terms with what his future held—he wishes with all his heart that he had someone to tell.

“Who was Piers Polkiss?” Draco asks, and Harry starts.

The truth is, he’s tried not to think of Piers in the two days since he found out about what happened. If he thinks he’ll have to figure out how he feels about it, and Harry- Harry doesn’t want to feel. He’s weary of it, really. “A friend of my cousin’s,” he says in response to Draco, tipping his head back against the arm rest. “They were both bullies. How do you know about Piers, anyway?”

“Nothing to do in this house but eavesdrop, Harry,” he shrugs. “He killed him, did he?”

“Seems like it. No other explanation makes any sense, and it was clearly a Killing curse.”

Draco sits up straighter, looking at Harry with narrowed eyes. Not suspicious—just puzzled. Determined. “How did he know who Piers was? Why did he go after him if you didn’t care about him?”

“Why don’t you head back and ask him,” Harry deadpans.

“I understand why he wouldn’t go after anyone you _ really _care about—so well-protected and all—but why not your muggle family? They live right near where he killed that kid, don’t they?”

“I don’t _ know_,” Harry snaps, and Draco’s mouth clicks shut. “I don’t know anything more about Voldemort than you do, and I don’t care to puzzle out the thought process behind the murder of my loved ones.”

Draco’s face goes sort of hard, but Harry doesn’t care to look much longer. “Noted,” he mutters, then stands. “I’m sorry I dared to be curious.”

Harry doesn’t respond. There’s never anything to say anymore.

———

In the end Harry asks Remus to keep their New Year’s festivities small, but agrees to a celebration all the same. 

The guest list is passed by him. As much as he loves them, and as much as he would adore seeing their smiling faces, Harry decides to leave Fred and George off the list. Along with them he kindly declined Remus’ questions of Moody and Shacklebolt, who Remus reassured would love to see Harry. Delicately Harry accepts Hagrid, only because he misses him. The final list came down to just eight people: Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Tonks, Remus and Sirius, Hagrid, Draco and himself. Remus promised that he understood Harry’s need for something quiet so soon after returning, and that he and Sirius would be beyond happy with whatever Harry needed or wanted. 

Harry sometimes forgets how very lucky he is, then they once again make it so very difficult for him to forget.

Tonks greets him with a “Wotcher, Harry!” then turns her hair bright purple—once, last year, Harry remembers telling her it was his favorite. Mr. Weasley embraces him tightly and Harry politely looks away when he sees his eyes welled up with tears. With Hagrid he does no such thing, simply because there’s no way to avoid his obvious sniffling when he tugs Harry up off the floor in his hug. “Harry,” he chokes, “it’s so good ter see yeh.”

Mrs. Weasley gives him the same motherly squeeze as always, pecking him on the cheek with a fond smile. She seems less afraid of him now, although it’s only been a few days. Maybe the distance gave her time to mellow out to the idea of him, Harry muses, or maybe she’s just put on a braver face.

Sirius wastes no time in pulling out the drinks—some sort of expensive champagne for now, although Harry can’t imagine the firewhiskey will stay tucked away in the cupboard for long—and lets a cup zing over to Harry along with the rest of the groups’ with a wink. Either no one notices or no one else cares enough to mention it. It is, after all, a holiday.

Draco, who Harry managed to coax downstairs before the rest of the party arrived, stays uncomfortably by Harry’s side. Neither of them had any such luck with Narcissa, who they don’t see for the entire night. Tonks, Harry can tell, does her best to make him feel welcomed, but Draco is very clearly out of his element. They have the radio tuned in to a wizarding music station and the room is filled with conversation and laughter, even with so few of them. It’s warm and homey and Harry can’t imagine Draco has ever experienced a party like this one with the Malfoys.

Hagrid, despite having never been a fan of Draco, is just as friendly as Tonks. Harry tries to make his thanks clear through his smiles. He bumps Draco’s shoulder with his own affectionately because it’s the most he can do to say thank you.

“A toast!” Hagrid booms, “Ter our Harry.” Harry squirms a bit—up until now, the focus of conversation has been kept mainly off of him—but lets Hagrid continue anyway. It’s more for his sake than Harry’s, anyway. “Ter the Boy-Who-Lived ‘n came back to us.”

The rest of the room raises their glasses after him. Even Draco, Harry notes fondly. “To Harry,” they echo, and this time he doesn’t even squirm. He just smiles at each of them in turn, and knows that there isn’t anywhere else he would rather be—not in this moment.

The party carries on. Remus and Sirius are almost nauseatingly in love. Harry can’t imagine it’s a secret within the order; anyone with two eyes can see it. Especially now, happy and giddy with a few drinks in each of their stomachs. As naturally as if they’ve never had a thing to hide Harry watches Sirius catch Remus’ lips with his own, pulling back with a goofy smile. Remus is actually blushing—Harry can see the red in his cheeks from across the room. Somewhere between his third and fourth glass of champagne Draco was pulled into a conversation with Mr. Weasley and began discussing something Harry can’t bother to keep up with—the effectiveness of some spell or another. And Harry- Harry can’t stop smiling. There’s a giddy, bubbling happiness rising in his stomach, and maybe the alcohol is partly to blame, but maybe it isn’t. Perhaps this is just how it feels to be truly content, truly heartwarmed and truly happy in a way he can’t remember. Did captivity take away his memory of this feeling? Or is this really so new?

The easy, drink-driven conversation is interrupted when everyone registers a sharp tapping noise. They fall instantly into silence, everyone freezing, and it continues. It sounds like something tapping a glass window but can’t be, as all the windows are hidden along with the Fidelius charm.

“What in the world…” It’s Mr. Weasley under his breath.

“It’s coming from the kitchen,” Sirius says, pushing himself to his feet. Harry can see the slight unsteadiness that came along with his third glass of firewhiskey.

Remus stands too, clasping Sirius’ elbow loosely. “Come on,” and together they head toward the kitchen. The rest of the party sits frozen, air stiff with apprehension, and Harry can feel Tonks’ worried eyes on him. Surely she, among others, is worried about what a reminder of fear will do to him—but Harry is alway afraid lately. He’d have to be back in Voldemort’s hands—literally more than figuratively—to ever feel the sort of fear that will shake him again. 

There’s the sound of a rarely-used window scraping open and wings—an owl.

“Who in the world…?” he hears Arthur mutter to no one in particular.

The ruffling of feathers, A yelp and curse from Sirius. “Hey! Bugger.” The sitting room is quiet enough to make out a pin-drop in the kitchen, and Harry hears the ruffling of parchment.

Then Remus calls out. “Dumbledore! It’s just a letter from Dumbledore,” and the air in the room seems to melt.

Molly presses a hand to her chest, panting slightly like she’s been bustling around the kitchen. “Thank heavens.”

“Dumbledore!” Hagrid booms, merely because everything he says comes out a _ boom _when he’s been given a few drinks. “A good thing, too. We’ve bin waitin’ to hear from him fer days, we have.”

There’s a silence and Draco is the one to break it impatiently. “Well what’s it say, then?”

Remus and Sirius still don’t return from the kitchen. “He’ll be here in a few days,” Remus calls anyway, and Draco rolls his eyes. Harry doesn’t bother asking over what—with Draco, it might as well be anything.

“Well,” Tonks says, the first to speak, “that’s good news, innit?” When no one responds decisively she shrugs. “Cheers, then!” and she downs her drink.

———

For the second time since arriving at Grimmauld place, Harry wakes up hungover. He appreciates it about as much as he did the first time, though this time at least he gets the pleasure of seeing Draco hungover beside him; rejoicing in Draco’s pain is a familiar comfort.

Later that morning Sirius finally cuts his hair, propped up on a stool in the center of the kitchen. He’s managed to charm his wand to function as clippers, then charms a pair of scissors to zing around Harry’s head, cleaning up the rough spots. His head immediately feels about a pound lighter. Sirius vanishes the mass amount of hair from the kitchen floor and Harry watches the display of wandless magic with interest; he didn’t know Sirius could do any.

“Just simple things,” Sirius explains as if he could hear Harry’s thoughts spoken aloud. “No offensive magic at all—maybe a bit of defensive, a _ Protego _or so. Simple things like household charms or levitation are easy, though. You’ll be able to catch those with just a few days of trying.”

“Interesting,” Harry hums noncommittally, and leaves it there. 

Sirius cuts Draco’s hair too, along with Remus’, then Remus cleans up Sirius. It all leaves a warm feeling in Harry’s stomach. Is this how it would have been if he’d been able to live with Sirius after third year? If Dumbledore hadn’t forced him back into the Dursley’s for another miserable summer?

For the first time possibly ever, Harry feels a sting of resentment toward his elder. He quickly shakes it off—it’s nothing worth dwelling over.

Two days pass and despite the pleasant few days Harry continues to feel a roiling beneath his skin. It’s his pent up magic—it must be—but it feels different than his magic ever has before. Heavier. Darker, maybe. Harry has never possessed dark magic, never wanted to and never come by it naturally, but he’s concerned. He’s concerned that dark magic is indeed what’s lurking beneath the surface of his body. Soul. Wherever such a thing resides. 

He worries that something wormed its way into him when he touched Voldemort. He worries that perhaps what he’s feeling isn’t himself at all, but that even from here he can feel Voldemort like a tugging from the deepest part of his being. He worries. Frets. And doesn’t say a word.

They notice anyway,

“I’m going to teach you wandless magic,” Remus tells Harry one day, throwing open the library door and approaching Harry where he sits on the love seat. This time Harry doesn’t even have it in him to protest. Anything they can try to get this wretched feeling out of him is worth it to Harry. If they won’t let him have a wand he has to try something else.

“Alright,” he nods tiredly, and Remus only looks surprised at his easy agreement for a moment before he nods.

“We start tonight. I need to gather some things.”

Harry goes to find Draco.

“I’m not letting you use the wand,” Draco says firmly.

“You already promised me!” Harry protests. “You said you’d share!”

“Well that was before I knew you needed to learn wandless magic, wasn’t it?”

Harry splutters. “You don’t trust Remus _ or _Sirius. Why are you suddenly taking orders from them?”

Draco wrinkles his nose as if it pains him to say it. “I might disagree with some parts of their… character—but I cannot deny that they’re both perfectly decent wizards. And I trust that anything the two of them want to do will only be in your best interest, worshipped as you are.”

Harry kicks his shin. “You’re an arse.”

“No, I _ care _,” he says, then, “and don’t make me say it again, please.”

Harry feels himself soften a bit at that. “Okay,” he huffs finally. “Yes, fine.” 

“Now stop being such a lazy git and learn some wandless magic,” Draco says, nudging him in the side. “You know you’re capable, especially with how antsy you’ve been. Your magic will cooperate as soon as you tell it to and really mean it.”

That night Remus and Harry meet in the upstairs drawing room.

“You need to feel it. Focus on your magic. You need to learn to harness it before you can use it for anything else.”

Harry tries—he really does. “I can’t grab hold of it,” he huffs in frustration. “It’s not one source. It’s everywhere, all over me and in me and around me.”

“So pull it inward. Picture a ball of magic in your stomach and try to gather it all there. You need a steady source or your magic will come out as frantic as it feels now.”

“You might have noticed by now that control is not my strong suit.”

“The feather, Harry. Look at the feather. This is a very simple charm.”

In front of them Remus has dragged an end table to the center of the room and placed a feather atop it. This is what Harry is supposed to be levitating; this was the first spell he ever learned. Remus is sure that his strong memories attached to the charm will aid him, as well as the length of time that’s passed since he mastered it.

“Move your hand as if you’re holding your wand, for now. It isn’t at all necessary, but the familiarity may help you focus.”

Harry practices the wand motion with his empty hand a few times, feeling foolish. “This is stupid.”

“_Try, _Harry. You know the incantation.”

Harry squeezes his eyes shut, trying to reign his magic in. The anxiety isn’t helping matters; it’s sending his magic in every direction. When he opens them he focuses on the feather with the level of fierceness he might a dementor. “_ Wingardium Leviosa._”

Nothing.

“I wasn’t expecting you to get in on your first try,” Remus assures calmly. “Try again.”

Harry does. There’s nothing.

Frustration. That isn’t helping, either.

“Merlin, Harry. I can feel your magic from here. _ You _have to control it.”

“I can’t,” Harry snaps. “That’s why I called this a lost cause in the first place!”

Remus looks at him quietly for a few seconds, then sighs. “Fine. A different approach—sit down.”

“What?”

“On the floor. Sit down, now.” Harry does, looking at Remus suspiciously. “Meditation. You’ll never get anywhere if you haven’t first learned to control yourself and your magic.”

“Are you going to ask me to do yoga next?” Harry mutters.

“Drop the attitude,” Remus says dryly, “and close your eyes. I want you to focus on clearing yourself. Keep your mind completely blank. When you have a thought, let it pass and redirect yourself to quietness. I want you to completely erase yourself—what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. This is where we start.”

“My mind is quite loud,” Harry says unsurely.

“This is how you teach it to shut up,” Remus responds. “Eyes closed.”

———

Meditation doesn’t go well for Harry.

They try again the day after with just as little success.

Narcissa begins to leave the library, sometimes.

———

Five days after the arrival of the letter Dumbledore appears in the doorway of Grimmauld place.

Harry wakes to Draco’s hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake. “Dumbledore is here. He’s downstairs.” Harry peers up at him groggily as the words register, then throws himself out of bed, pulling on the same pair of jeans he wore yesterday and a robe over his nightshirt. It’s all he can be bothered with. “Come on,” Draco urges, “and be quiet on the stairs.”

The two of them make their way downstairs on quiet bare feet and pause at the bottom of the stairs, pressing up against the wall. Sure enough, Harry hears Dumbledore’s calm voice drifting around the corner. It seems that they’re still standing in the entryway.

Mr. Weasley’s voice comes out hushed, and Harry wonders when he arrived. “No,” Mr. Weasley says, presumably to Dumbledore, “he hasn’t spoken a word of what went on after he was taken. He’s either in denial or so determined to suppress the trauma that he’ll deny any of it happened at all. The emotional damage he must be suffering, not even to mention the magic build up that’s keeping him so unstable.”

“Magical buildup?”

“He’s been ill—dizzy, sick to the stomach, lightheaded. Remus is trying to teach him wandless magic so he has an outlet now that his wand is gone.”

“And is it working?”

Harry peers around the corner. Both wizards are turned very slightly away from him. Remus and Sirius are nowhere to be seen and Harry glances behind him and Draco uneasily. Mr. Weasley wrings his hands, glancing to the side, and Harry ducks back around the corner just before he makes direct eye contact. There are footsteps and Harry and Draco shrink back further, pressed up against the table lining the hall. 

“No need to worry, Arthur,” Dumbledore says airily, “I’d be able to sense eavesdroppers, if there did so happen to be any.” Mr. Weasley’s steps pause, then he turns and makes his way back to Dumbledore. Harry and Draco exchange an uneasy glance. That can mean nothing but that Dumbledore is most certainly aware of their presence; he just doesn’t care enough to call them out directly for it.

“All I know from what Remus has told me is that Harry’s magic is sporadic. He’s having a difficult time reigning it in enough to focus on casting any spells. Apparently they’ve forced some out of him and it was… powerful. Far more than it should be.”

Dumbledore hums. “Then we shall see how it develops. I’ve never known Harry to fail once he’s set his eye on something.”

Harry’s heart warms in the slightest.

He sees it as Dumbledore’s hand raises to adjust his spectacles—one hand completely blackened and shriveled. How it became that way Harry cannot even begin to imagine. He inhales sharply and Draco shoves past him to peer around the corner, his eyes widening nearly comically as he tugs Harry back around the corner. “What the fuck is that?” he whispers, alarmed. 

“Dunno,” Harry mutters, “but I’m sick of eavesdropping.”

He steps around the corner with no pretense. “Professor Dumbledore,” Harry nods toward him, still unable to look away from where the shriveled, blackened limb reached out from his sleeve. “What happened to your hand?”

Arthur drops his gaze down and away from Harry, looking faintly guilty. Dumbledore himself is perfectly composed, not looking surprised by Harry’s appearance in the slightest. Which, Harry supposes, he probably isn’t.

Logically Harry knows it’s been barely six months since he last saw Dumbledore, but somehow he expected that it would look like longer. Dumbledore, though, doesn’t look older. He doesn’t look more tired than before. Dumbledore looks much the same as he has from the moment Harry met him. When he turns to Harry his gaze is warm, kind, peaceful, maybe, but that’s all. None of the crushing, crippling relief that Harry can feel turning his legs unsteady is reflected in Dumbledore’s eyes, but then the wizard has never been known to give much away.

The only thing Harry sees as an indicator that any length of time had passed at all is Dumbledore’s hand, ugly and marred. Diseased.

“Oh, this,” Dumbledore hums, smiling. “Nothing of consequence, and nothing to be spoken of just yet.” Mr. Weasley doesn’t make a sound, and Harry wonders if Mr. Weasley knows more than he does. Is he the only one being kept sheltered from this? Draco steps out from the corner behind Harry and Dumbledore nods at him kindly. “Draco, a pleasure to see you again.” He turns back toward Harry. “I understand you wanted to discuss something with me?”

Harry says, “Not here.”

Indulgently, Dumbledore follows Harry upstairs, Harry sending Draco an apologetic glance as he scowls on their way past. He leads them into a spare room, furnished minimally with a fireplace that ignites the moment they step through the doorway—Dumbledore’s doing, undoubtedly. The wizard sits wordlessly in a plush armchair before the fire and Harry mirrors him.

“I can’t express the relief I have at seeing you well.”

Harry blinks. “Thank you,” he says unconvincingly. He can’t blame Dumbledore for not having more to say—not when Harry hasn’t the slightest inkling, either—but it’s still somehow disappointing. 

“I assume, Harry, that you’d like to discuss Professor Snape.”

Harry blinks once, twice. Closes his mouth. Another surprise. It’s shock at both the fact that Dumbledore didn’t start with an inquiry on Voldemort and that he correctly guessed Harry’s need to talk about Snape. Harry plays dumb, only because he wants to know what Dumbledore thinks he knows. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to, sir.”

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkle and Harry fights the urge to narrow his own. Something in Dumbledore’s nonchalance rubs against Harry in the wrong way. Is it self-centered to wish for more of a reaction at his safe return? Dumbledore goes on. “His cooperation with Voldemort, of course. Unless there’s another matter you’d like to bring to my attention?”

Harry’s head spins. “You mean- you _ knew?_”

Dumbledore brings his fingers to a steeple in front of his face, eyes meeting Harry’s unblinkingly. “Do you trust me, Harry?”

“Of course,” Harry responds immediately. Of course he trusts Dumbledore. After everything he truly has no choice but to. Harry thinks that even if he harboured suspicions, even if Dumbledore’s behavior appeared odd, he, at the end of the day, would still trust the man with his life.

“Then choose to trust me now when I say that I know where Snape’s allegiances lie, and it is nothing for you to be concerned over.”

Which doesn’t mean Harry is brainwashed. “Draco told me things you need to know, you need to _ listen _-”

“I am well aware of the things you’ve heard from Mr. Malfoy,” Dumbledore interrupts, still the picture of contentment. “Trust, Harry.”

Harry’s jaw tightens. “At least talk to Draco, then.”

“I fully plan on speaking to Draco,” Dumbledore assures, “as well as Mrs. Malfoy. For now, I need you to take that as it is. We will not be discussing Professor Snape any further.”

His voice leaves no room for argument, despite the tone being much the same as always. Harry finds he doesn’t have it in him to push the subject—not at the risk of wasting Dumbledore’s presence just in front of him.

Harry asks one more thing. “Can I trust him?”

Dumbledore doesn’t hesitate. “I would trust Severus Snape with my life.”

They fall into a silence that seems to be heavy only for Harry. Dumbledore looks into the fire, a small smile quirking the corner of his lips and humming a tune under his breath. He seems perfectly content to wait for Harry to break it, so he does.

“Are you going to… ask?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore says, then turns toward Harry. “Would you like me to tell you about what’s gone on in the past six months of your absence?”

That… was not the question Harry was referring to.

“I’ve heard it already. From Draco. And the Order members.”

“Forgive me, I should have phrased differently— would you like to hear it from me?”

“Where have you been?” Harry asks instead.

“A conversation for another time.”

Harry fights down the urge to curse. Dumbledore won’t talk about Snape. He won’t tell Harry about his mysterious absence. He’s only offered to repeat to Harry what he’s already heard from others. “Do you have anything at all useful for me, then?”

Dumbledore watches Harry for too long—long enough that Harry breaks contact to look at the grate. His eyes are too much. “It seems not,” he says finally. “Is there anything else, Harry?”

He hesitates. Years of refusal to tell anyone his secret, to give anything away. Years of lying and secrecy and loneliness, and now Dumbledore is in front of him. 

Harry could say it. He could tell Dumbledore right then, all of his own accord, before the truth reveals itself in some other, uglier way, but what happens then? Up to this point, Dumbledore has protected Harry’s life at all costs, but could he possibly continue if protecting Harry means keeping Voldemort alive? If Harry truly is the thing tying Voldemort to life, could Dumbledore choose to protect him still? Does his devotion to Harry’s life extend so far?

Harry isn’t confident that it does.

Before… before being captured by Voldemort, before kick-starting this connection between the two of them, whatever this power is that their marks hold—Harry didn’t think he could kill Voldemort. Even with the curse of their marks he was doubtful that Voldemort was even human enough to be touched by that pure of magic, but after feeling the reaction of the contact between them and feeling the resulting pull, feeling their inability to harm each other, Harry isn’t so sure. Perhaps Harry’s death really could end Voldemort, however faulty their connection may be.

One year ago, Harry would have sacrificed himself in an instant if he believed it would take Voldemort along with him.

Can he say the same now?

He’s just been given his life back. He’s only just stepped back into the world after six months of isolation, of forgetting, and he’ll be asked to make a choice: to give his life to bring Voldemort with him, or to keep his secret. To kill Voldemort or to save him. Ultimately, the question is the same: is he willing to die for this?

Harry is not as selfless as he once was, nor as brave. He knows this better than any of the rest of them ever could. 

When Harry’s silence draws on Dumbledore speaks again. “I must ask you, Harry, if there’s anything you’d like to tell me. Anything at all.”

Harry swallows and sees himself as a twelve year-old boy sitting in Dumbledore’s office, hearing a voice echo within the castle walls, not even understanding who he was. The power he held. At twelve, though, he already knew his life was destined to end far sooner than it should. At twelve Harry knew that the thing he met under Professor Quirrel’s turban was tied to him with a deep, deep magic, something no wizard had ever been able to explain. At twelve Harry knew Voldemort was his soulmate but couldn’t possibly fathom the depths that reached. At twelve years old, Harry was ready to die.

Harry didn’t tell Dumbledore then, either.

“No, Professor,” he says. “There’s nothing.”

———

Harry leaves then, simply because there is never, ever, anything to say.

———

That night Dumbledore leaves and Remus urges him once again into meditation.

It goes even poorer than the two nights before.

———

“I can’t _ do it,_” Harry hisses. “This meditation, my brain is too _ busy, _and my magic, it’s- it’s distracting.”

“What do you suggest we try next?” Remus asks with a sigh.

Harry pushes himself to his feet. “I’m trying the feather again,” he says surely.

Remus watches him for a few seconds then shrugs, rising to his feet and waving his hand once. The feather appears on the table and Harry scowls at Remus. There’s no need for him to show off.

“You need to want it more,” Remus tells him. “How badly do you want to feel your own magic again? How badly do you crave it? This is _ your _ magic, Harry. You hold it within you. You are its master. Now _ tell it so._”

“It’s not that simple!” Harry’s skin is heating, buzzing dangerously. “I am no one’s master, not even my own. My magic is like its own person!”

“Try,” Remus says steadily. “Keep your hand relaxed but brisk, now. You know the wand movement.”

“Yes, now if only I _ had _a wand,” Harry bites. 

Remus ignores the comment. “You’re the one who wanted to try again Harry, now you have to _ want _it. Draw from the deepest parts of your magic. You know how to reach it.”

Harry breathes out slowly and shuts his eyes, resigning himself to another failed attempt. This, at least, will be better than sitting cross-legged on the floor for hours. He imagines following a string through his own stomach and down to his center. He tries to concentrate on the ever-present buzzing and draw into it, pulling it into a tight knot at his core. He pictures it compressing into a solid orb of power, centered within him and ready to be drawn upon.

This already feels different than before.

For the first time in months, he feels steady. He once again feels his magic like an anchor rather than the roiling tide. He opens his eyes just wide enough to focus on the feather.

It’s only a feather. He did this as a first-year with a wand—surely he can do it five years later without one. He exhales through puffed out cheeks slowly. 

“_Wingardium Leviosa._”

The feather rises to hover above the table.

Harry loses the rest of his breath in one exhale. He stares dumbfoundedly for a moment then grins, spinning toward Remus, waiting for his congratulations. 

He freezes. 

It is not just the feather.

The love seat and armchair have risen a foot in the air, not so much as a wobble to them. So has the coffee table and the old editions of _ Witch Weekly _strewn across the top of it. The knick-knacks lined up across the fireplace’s mantle have risen, as have the three books cases pressed against the left wall, a few books wiggling loose in the jostle and hovering beside them. Even the rug in the center of the room is floating an inch or two above the wooden flooring.

The room is shimmering with Harry’s magic; it’s something palpable in the space around them. The only objects in the room left touching the ground are Remus, Harry, and the table that the feather once rested upon. 

Remus seems completely incapable of speech. 

Harry says, “That went better than expected,” and although he sounds faint with shock his words break the space like a steel-tipped arrow and every object in the air falls back to the ground with a deafening crash.

There’s the shattering of a few glass pieces that were displayed on the mantle, but Harry hardly notices. 

The buzzing has vanished. 

And Harry feels like a boy on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> acab
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	17. Darker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Hope you’re staying safe and well.
> 
> The bad news is that I’m concussed. The good news is this chapter was almost completely finished before I was concussed. So I wrapped it up and I’ve decided to post it early to minimize the wait for the next chapter, which may take a bit longer depending on how my brain heals.
> 
> I even had my lovely girlfriend beta read for me which I rarely do. My head is sore, but I’ve been determined to get this out.
> 
> As always, please protect yourselves and others. Be safe and I’m always wishing the best

* * *

_ Harry, _

_ Hey, mate. I’m sorry for not being able to see you at Grimmauld place. Mum said you needed to take it easy, and Hermione was allowed to go because she ‘has tact.’ Honestly, she’s right. I made Hermione read the first draft of this to cross out the insensitive parts. That sentence is new, so sorry if it is _ _tactless. _

_ Not having you around was awful. Thinking you would never be around again was even worse. I’m sorry to admit this, but when Hermione came bursting into my bedroom to tell me you’d come back I cried. I cried buckets. Be thankful I’m even saying that, cause it was probably the most humiliating moment of my life. Hermione held me and everything. I felt like a girl. _

_ I had a whole fight with Mum about not seeing you. I’ve been icing her out since you came back. _

_ What else? Uh, Fred and George have started their shop. It’s in Diagon Alley and it’s a hit, absolutely bonkers if you ask me. They won’t even give me discounts. I’m their brother! _

_ Percy is a prat. I’m not even going to go into it. _

_ Ginny is good. Captain of the Quidditch team. All the boys are terrified of her. I’ve never been more proud. _

_ There’s a new potion’s master called Slughorn, short, annoying little git, and favors the Slytherins just as much as Snape. He holds these parties and only invites Purebloods or wizards and witches that seem like they’ll go somewhere politically. He invited me, though I think it was mostly pity. (You made life a lot easier for me, actually. Not that I cared much at the time.) I actually got up the balls to ask Hermione to come with me. Unlike the Yule ball. We never filled the hole that we could feel without you there, but it was good to not drift from her. Dunno what we would have done. Anyway, I love her. Don’t tell her I said that—this wasn’t in the first draft. _

_ Anyway, we all miss you mate. I’ll even give you a hug the next time I see you. We’ll have to do the alternate arm thing so it doesn’t look too gay, though. Not that I have anything against that. Gays, I mean. Not being gay for you. I’m a little against that. _

_ I love you. In not a gay way. Hermione told me to tell you that, because maybe you didn’t know. The part about loving you, I mean. Not the ‘no homo.’ _

_ Happy to have you back. _

_ -Ron _

_ ——— _

Three days after Dumbledore’s visit Harry blows a brick wall into pieces.

On the top floor there’s a primarily stone room where Buckbeak resided for a long time. Since the hippogriff’s departure it’s been filled with a few dummy’s and mostly left to gather dust; Sirius is far from needing target practice and no other temporary residents could bother.

On that day Sirius brings Harry upstairs to practice. Remus wouldn’t have minded, probably would have loved it actually, considering he was once a teacher, but Sirius convinced him to let him have a chance at teaching Harry. Remus agreed, albeit apprehensively.

They start with the simplest—and probably the one Harry is best at—_ expelliarmus. _A faux wand is left in the dummy’s hand, just wood, no core. His first try is too loaded with power, although Harry didn’t intend it to be. The wand catapults back at him and it’s the most he can do to duck before it collides with his face.

“Less power,” Sirius instructs. “Focus on holding some back. Like a faucet—let it drip. Don’t turn the tap all the way open.” 

Harry tries again. It’s better, but it leaves a nasty welt on his hand from how hard it hit his palm. “Fuck,” he curses, and tries again. Eventually he gets the power balance just right and Sirius praises him, but Harry is concerned. The amount of magic he’d held back compared to the amount of magic he’d let out is monumental. If using the tap metaphor—it was the one or two drops that escape the faucet before you realize it’s leaking and turn it closed again.

Never in his life has he felt so much power.

“Let’s try offensive skills,” Sirius says, and Harry looks at him uneasily. “There’s a reason we mastered _ expelliarmus _first. You have a feel for your power level now. Besides, you won’t be fighting me, just the dummy. Alright?”

Harry is still unsure, but nods anyway. “Alright.”

“Good. _ Stupefy. _ Nice and easy.”

Harry practices the wand movement a few times with his empty hand. It isn’t necessary, but it helps. Some subconscious thing, probably.

He focuses on the dummy, focuses on the tap, just a few drops a minute. Breathes out steadily. “_Stupefy._”

It hits the dummy square in the chest and tears through it, leaving a gaping hole in its body as the curse carries forward, colliding with the back wall and effectively destroying it. The brick crumbles, revealing the attic staircase behind it that’s half caved in. Harry stands there as if he was the one _ stupefied. _

“That wasn’t even a _ reducto,_” he breathes out, his entire body shaking. It isn’t trembling from the power of it, from fatigue, but rather the _ rush. _Rather the thrill that went through his body like a wave of cool water at the taste of so much power. 

Sirius looks astonished. Harry breaths, _ “Reparo,_” and the room reassembles itself in the span of seconds.

“What in god’s name just happened?” Sirius asks.

There’s a shout from the bottom of the stairs. Remus. “Sirius? Harry? Is everything okay?”

Sirius shakes himself. “Fine, Remus.”

“I must have lost control of the tap,” Harry says to Sirius lightly, but he didn’t. Maybe he’d opened it a bit wider than the _ expelliarmus,_ but nothing to warrant the power he just displayed.

“I want to try something,” Sirius says finally, collecting himself and regaining his calm demeanor. “Cast a _ protego._”

“Er-”

“No closed tap,” he adds. “I want it wide open.”

“Are you sure?” Harry asks apprehensively.

“Do you have the control to keep it from rebounding?”

Harry nods. Right now, he has enough power to do anything, and protecting Sirius easily tops his priority list. “Definitely.”

“Then I’m sure. Don’t hold anything back. If you feel it weakening enough that a powerful curse could break it, raise your hand. Don’t be afraid to stop me.”

Harry nods.

“Shield up,” Sirius orders.

“_Protego.”_ His shield raises and he can feel the power of it emanating like a space-heater.

Sirius starts simple. Harry can tell that he won’t be holding anything back, either. “_Calvorio. Locomotor wibbly. Locomotor mortis_.” It hits and Harry doesn’t have to do anything but think about the shield absorbing rather than deflecting. “_Petrificus totalus. Reducto._” He pauses, lowering his wand and examining Harry carefully. “I’m going to move on to more powerful spells, now. Some curses. Do you feel steady?”

Harry nods. The shield charm feels as if it had never been hit at all.

“_Confringo. Diffindo.”_ His chosen curses get worse. “_Sectumsempra. Expulso. Affrio. Aruspices expulso._” Not a single one of these spells are harmless; some can even be fatal if used right.

“Dear lord, Harry,” Sirius pants, shaking out his wand hand. “I haven’t seen so much as a ripple.”

“There hasn’t been,” he says, mystified. Usually a simple _ protego _will weaken with time and the number of curses it deflects. Simple things like hexes take a lesser amount than curses—the more powerful the magic the more damage the shield takes—but his hasn’t weakened in the slightest. He knows Sirius isn’t going light, either. “I don’t even feel them hit.”

“One more,” Sirius murmurs, and Harry nods readily. The look on his face is different than before. Troubled, almost, and determined.

He says, “_Crucio._”

In the few moments—the fraction of a second—in which Harry watches the red light streak toward him he sees everything he experienced in brief flashes. A barren room. A charred table. Chains and nightmares and losing himself. The wide ballroom of Malfoy Manor. Torture.

He makes a primal sound, a wild animal’s cry of fear.

It hits the shield and disappears.

Sirius stares in stunned silence, mouth hanging slightly open. His eyes are flashing rapidly between emotions—confusion, astonishment, awe. Harry just blocked an Unforgivable—one of the three spells in existence that have never, in all the history of the wizarding world, been stopped.

Harry collapses to the ground anyway. Not because his magic is drained (it isn’t.) Not because it sapped his strength (it didn’t.) Not because he’s physically damaged (he really, truly isn’t.) He collapses to his knees because every bit of oxygen in his lungs is yanked out of him in one exhale, every bit in the room disappears, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, _ he can’t breathe. _The world goes hazy, blurred. He can’t feel his fingertips, can’t feel anything. He thinks Sirius is talking, maybe yelling, but he can’t tell. 

He sees Voldemort. His consciousness is filled with Voldemort and nothing else in the world can penetrate.

There are more voices, or maybe just one, he can’t focus enough to tell. Someone touches his shoulder and someone begins screaming—and only belatedly does he realize that it’s him. It’s him screaming—and it’s no _ crucio. _It is a primal, ancient terror. 

Harry is going to die. He knows it as surely as he knows anything. He’s going to die on this floor in this brick room in this old house, and it’s going to be soon. He’ll suffocate. Or his pulse will beat so rapidly that he’ll have a heart attack. No matter the method, he is going to die.

His vision is going spotty on the edges.

No one tries to touch him again.

———

Harry wakes slowly, the world coming into focus in increments. First he feels the bed beneath him, then the blanket draped over his body. He kicks that off first, his entire body clammy with a cold sweat. He’s trembling only slightly.

He hears a rustling to his side and jumps, bolting to sit up. He breathes out. Only Draco, perched on the edge of his own bed and looking at Harry pensively. When he doesn’t speak Harry does. His voice is raspy. “How long have you been sitting there?” 

“Well, I slept for a while, and that involved lying down.” Harry must have given him a look, because he hurries to answer the question. “Since they brought you in here. Didn’t want to leave you alone.”

Harry has no memory of any dreams while he slept, but he feels the distinctive nameless emotion that he always does after waking up from one. “Did you try to wake me?”

“They told me not to touch you.”

Harry remembers the screaming. “Fair enough,” he murmurs. “How long have I been out?”

“About twelve hours. Can’t imagine why, as Remus checked your magic’s stability and it wasn’t even slightly affected.”

“You know you can be drained from things _ other _than magic, right?”

“Myth,” Draco waves off, and Harry finally smiles. Barely there, but he wanted it to be. 

“You’ve been listening, right?”

“Potter,” Draco scoffs. “What do you take me for? A respectful young man? Of course I was listening.” He bunches up his eyebrows, thinking, and it’s awfully endearing. “Remus scolded Sirius for awhile, but then I think he seemed so sick with guilt that Remus couldn’t bring himself to do it anymore. He keeps saying that he knew without a doubt you would stop it, and if he didn’t he never would have tried. I believe him, because believing that a spell that has never been blocked in the history of wizarding kind could be shielded by a traumatized sixteen year-old boy is perfectly within his realm of stupidity.”

Harry frowns. “Well it worked, didn’t it?”

“Miraculously, it seems so. _ I _think he cast a different spell without realizing it, but no one cares to listen to me.”

“No.” Harry murmurs. “It was definitely _ crucio_.”

Harry could feel it as it came toward him. He could _ feel _ the power of the curse, the maliciousness, the _ dark _of it. It would be impossible to confuse with anything else, that red bolt of lightning. 

Harry doesn’t say more, and Draco simply stares at him for a long time. “Harry,” his voice is the gentlest Harry has ever heard it, and the most pained. “What did he _ do _to you?”

Harry is quiet. How does he answer such a question? What _ didn’t _Voldemort do to him? He drove Harry to insanity, made him wish he was dead, broke down all his defenses. He gave Harry nightmares, hallucinations, made him doubt everything he saw.

But Voldemort had stayed by his bed. He’d touched Harry and brought him the closest he’s ever been to enlightenment. Voldemort hurt him, but only in making Harry crave him, even now. It hurt when he was near him and it hurts when he’s away.

What did Voldemort do? Possessed him. Obsessed over him. Disgusted Harry with his infatuation and somehow managed to pull him in anyway.

“Terrible, terrible things,” he says finally, because it isn’t a lie. He’s only leaving out a truth—that there was plenty not terrible at all.

“Why won’t you tell anyone?” Draco asks, but it doesn’t sound accusatory. Just- sad. So sad.

Harry tips his head back. “I’d imagine the answer is similar to the reason I broke down at the sight of the _ cruciatus_.” He thinks that’s all he’ll say, but he continues as if seized by someone else. All of the things he’s been unable to say seem to tumble out of him. “If I think about it… if I admit that it happened… there’s this fear that I think could tear me apart. It’s agony. If I ever said it out loud I would have to face the fact that it’s real, and- it can’t be. For me, for my own sanity- it can’t be.”

Draco hesitates for a long moment before responding. “That’s why I never came out,” he says. His voice takes on the familiar tone it always does when he’s feeling more than he wants to reveal. Flat. “Purebloods are all about ‘carrying on the line.’ My parents have been friends with gay wizards, even some gay couples, and it was never an issue for them. But for me as their son, they wouldn’t be able to accept it. Then they’d make me marry Astoria anyway, and I think that would be worse.

“I thought that if I never told anyone it would go away. Saying it out loud seemed so… final. Like as soon as I gave it validation it would stick to me and I’d never be able to take it back.” Harry doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to ruin it. “I know that’s… different from trauma, but I do sort of understand.”

“You can’t control something anymore if it isn’t a secret,” Harry says. Draco isn’t looking at him but nods anyway. “Did you ever tell anyone?”

Draco smiles wryly, still too far from Harry to reach. “I just did,” he says. “Wasn’t ever going to get rid of it, anyway.”

“Well, thanks,” Harry says lamely, because he can’t summon up any words to properly express what he’s feeling. Honored. Humbled. Grateful.

Draco cracks a small grin. “Not a problem.”

———

_ Harry, _

_ Have you gotten Ron’s letter yet? I thought I should tell you that I proof-read it before he sent it off, so as not to make you upset. I really hope he didn’t add anything afterward, but he probably did, knowing him. I hope it wasn’t too tactless. _

_ How are things at Grimmauld place? Has Dumbledore responded yet? And did you celebrate New Years? I hope you did something, even if it was small. I know it was a bit too hectic for Christmas this year. _

_ Things are mostly the same at Hogwarts. It still feels wrong without you here, but knowing that you’re safe and well changes everything. The school at large, of course, doesn’t know you’re back. They don’t know anything, really, other than the fact that you didn’t come back for sixth year. As much as you’ll try to deny it, everyone misses you. Sometimes even the Slytherins. _

_ I hope you don’t mind that we told Neville and Luna. We thought that if anyone deserved to know it would be them. They said they’re planning to write to you, so expect those soon. _

_ I hope you know that you aren’t obligated to write back, and no one will be upset if you don’t quite have it in you right now. Just know that I am always thinking of you and wishing you the best, and we’re all so grateful that we get to see you again. _

_ I really love you, Harry. I made Ron tell you too, but he might have edited it out. _

_ Much love, _

_ Hermione _

_ ——— _

Harry knows that no one understands where this power came from except him. He knows they’re mystified by it but must also know that something happened between the Battle of the Department of Mysteries and his return to them that changed his magic. As far as Harry is aware, the only thing that wizards know can make magic multiply like this is bonding with a soul. When you find a shared soul one soul’s magic is the other’s. They become the sum of each other.

As far as Harry can tell, neither of them have put two and two together. Or if they have, they’re refusing to believe it.

Instead they want to lecture him about mental health.

“Do you know what PTSD is?”

Harry squirms in his seat. He’s heard the word before, never in a way that was positive, and never in a way he truly understood. “Er- not really?”

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It happens to some people after they’ve lived through traumatic events, or witnessed them. Like deaths or car crashes- things like that. There are things that’ll give you flashbacks or make you panic, which we’ve witnessed. It makes life a lot harder to live.”

“Okay,” Harry says slowly. “Why am I hearing this? And isn’t this a muggle thing?” He’s never heard any wizard use the term before. Or anything like it, really.

“Wizards aren’t known best for their knowledge of mental ailments, so it’s a borrowed term,” Remus says, then glances at Sirius unsurely.

Sirius purses his lips. “We want you to see a mind healer.”

Harry’s defenses immediately go up. “You- what? I don’t need a mind healer. It’s been barely any time, it’ll get easier. You’ve got to give me a chance, at least.”

“Harry,” Remus says placatingly, “sometimes without help… it doesn’t get better.”

Harry splutters. “This is ridiculous. Everyone thinks I’m _ dead._ What mind healer are you going to bring here that won’t open their mouth the moment they can make it to the press?”

“I know someone,” Sirius explains. “She was loosely attached to the Order during the first war and has never been anything but loyal to us.”

“She’s still a stranger! I don’t want to talk to a stranger! What happened with him is- it’s- it’s sensitive! It’s dangerous for anyone else to know.”

“You don’t need to tell her what happened if you can’t. She can still help you work through the effects it had. I saw a mind healer after Askaban and never wanted to speak of it again, so I didn’t. There are ways to work through trauma that don’t involve reliving it.”

“This is ridiculous,” Harry repeats for lack of any other argument, looking between the two a few times to see if they’ll change their minds. At the lack of response he stands and stomps out of the room. He bumps into Draco as he comes around the corner, predictably. “Come on, snoop. Let’s go.”

———

“How’s your mom?” Harry asks Draco. 

“About that,” he says, biting his lip, “she actually asked me to ask if you would be willing to talk to her. She’s ready to apologize, I think, and thank you.”

“She lost her husband.”

“Just- just hear her out, alright? Let her say what she needs to.”

Harry is waiting by the fire in the library, summoning books from the shelves by title. He doesn’t know many books and they have every one he can think of, so it isn’t a pressing task.

“Do you mind if I sit?”

Harry looks up to see Narcissa. She looks paler than before, if even possible, and thinner, but still her hair is brushed back without a strand out of place and she’s dressed neatly. Harry has never seen Narcissa Malfoy look like anything but a porcelain doll.

“Sure,” he says, then clears his throat. “Please.”

She does, crossing her ankles and smoothing out her skirt. She sits like there’s a string attached to the top of her head pulling her upright. Harry straightens out his posture self-consciously.

“I wanted to apologize for my actions,” she says lightly. “I’ve been unnecessarily rude.”

Harry, looking at her, feels much more guilty than he expected. He thought there might be some twinge of resentment, however slight, at the blame she’s put on him since leaving the Manor, but he can’t find any of it. All he sees is her empty eyes realizing that Lucius never followed them.

“No I- I understand. I know that this was my fault.”

“You are not to blame for leaving my husband behind,” she says gently, kindly. “It was Lucius’ choice to stay, to protect us. You could not control his actions.”

“If it weren’t for me he wouldn’t have had to make the choice at all,” Harry says, and he doesn’t know why he’s arguing against his own favor; he doesn’t know why he so desperately wants to blame himself.

“Correct,” Narcissa nods, “but if he hadn’t been forced to make that choice Draco and I would still be in that Manor, as would you. If ever we were to ask Lucius, I’m certain he would thank you, not blame you. As I am.”

Harry opens his mouth and then closes it. He’s run out of arguments.

“You saved Draco and are still saving him,” Narcissa says. “I will never be anything but grateful.”

———

At night, a serpent comes for him.

“_Nagini_,” he greets her every time. “_Good to see you again_.”

She isn’t real. If Voldemort had been showing up in his dreams he could blame their soul connection, but Nagini has no connection to Harry. He’s confident it isn’t Voldemort playing as her, either. Every time he’s ever dreamt of Voldemort in her skin, she’s kept his eyes. Here they’re yellow with slitted pupils. Ordinary.

“_I miss you,_” he tells her sometimes. “_Not Voldemort, he can piss right off—“ _ a white lie, _ “—but you I’m really quite fond of.”_

She always coils around his ankles or his legs. If he’s sitting, his shoulders. Anywhere she can reach. In his dreams she offers the same relief as Voldemort’s touch. He wakes up, always, craving more. His mind has set itself on torturing him, like it _ wants _him to give in, go back. Probably it does. The part of his soul that still misses the other half of itself.

The dreams are designed to make him crave, and they succeed.

———

Harry’s magic no longer feels like it’s itching at his skin or tearing him apart. It doesn’t feel like craving and desperate thirst. It’s just- there. Ready to be pulled upon. Sometimes impatient, but Harry knows how to let it out in small increments—charm the dishes to wash themselves in the kitchen, turn on the fireplace, use _ accio _too often. His magic is tameable, but still kept on a very tight leash.

It’s exhilarating, the ability to use it again. Addictive. Far more addictive than his magic has ever been before. Sometimes the extent of his addiction almost _ does _feel dark. Sometimes Harry feels rotted. 

But that isn’t Harry. It’s a side-effect, something easily shaken. He just doesn’t know how to do it yet.

His addiction to Voldemort, though, how he feels when he wakes up from a dream with Faux Nagini, that ache in the center of his chest that he fears only Voldemort can fill… is not so simple. He will never be able to wash Voldemort from his skin, nor fill that hollow space.

Some days are better than others. Some days he even thinks he can live this way forever. On the bad days he doesn’t want anything in the world more than he wants to touch him.

Voldemort. His _ warmwarmwarm. _

On the bad days Harry is frigid and sure that he won’t ever thaw. 

Today is a bad day he’s determined to shake. There is something he needs to prove to himself. 

He finds himself in the dueling room, this time alone. He waves the dummies to the edges of the room with just a brush of magic because simple spells like this have stopped needing incantations. Now that Harry has unblocked his magic he knows that there isn’t a single spell he can’t do. After an attempt or two, or maybe none at all, he can master anything. The well within him seems to go on and on and on. Bottomless. The trick is not to pull too much. That’s when he begins to blow out walls or shatter kitchenware. 

Harry is learning, slowly. He is learning how not to let his magic control him like a beast.

Today Harry stands in the dueling room, his mind set on one spell. There are no dementors here, nor a boggart handy; Harry is faced only with an empty room and no wand and his mind and the endless well of magic brewing within him. Waiting, as always, to be pulled upon. Like a dog with a treat on the tip of its nose, trained to be still but itching and jumping all the same.

This spell has come like breathing to Harry for a long time. He’s taught other students in the Room of Requirement. He’s mastered it. Surely if Harry can cast a _ protego _that blocks an unforgivable he can conjure a bloody stag. 

Harry breathes deeply. Breathes out. Pulls his magic to the tip of his fingers. Says clearly, “_Expecto patronum._”

Nothing. That’s fine. Harry shakes out his wand hand, wandless, and fixes his stance. “_ Expecto patronum!_”

There’s nothing. His magic is there, jumping impatiently in the tips of his fingers and beginning to zip painfully up and down his wrists. It’s _ there,_ as always—there just seems to be a disconnect. Somewhere between his magic and the incantation there’s a broken link. He follows the chain backward but can’t seem to find it.

He tries again, focusing on putting _ more _ behind his words—more power, more feeling, more want. He pushes all he has against it, this time. “_Expecto patronum!_”

(_“The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that dementors feeds upon—hope, happiness, the desire to survive-”) _

_ (“How do you conjure it?”) _

_ (“With an incantation, which will work only if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory.”) _

That’s it, he realizes—a patronus isn’t about power. He’s focusing too much on force. Harry pulls for more than power—for happiness, for light. It is an altogether harder thing to do. He tries to recall what it was that he thought of the first time he cast a real Patronus but cannot remember. Has it really been so long? Has it truly been?

Harry searches. _ He and Draco are outside Malfoy Manor, rolling around in the snow like schoolboys. Harry can feel frost on the tip of his nose. His fingers are numb… _ “_Expecto patronum!” _

More, more._ Harry is with the Weasleys in the backyard, one picnic table extended to the length of three and chickens pecking at their feet. They’re laughing, Ginny batting them away, ‘Shoo, shoo.’ _ But- no, his concentration breaks. Is that a memory, or is it something Harry dreamed up in his head? Is this another mirage of hope he’d clung to in that room with bare walls that room with bare floors that ashen table _ that room that room that room. _ Enough, Harry. Think of the chickens. _ “Expecto patronum!” _

_ (You might want to select another memory, a happy memory, I mean, to concentrate on… That one doesn’t seem to have been strong enough…”) _

Harry searches, desperately, grasping. “_Expecto patronum!” _ Hogwarts in the Room of Requirement. His friends. _ “Expecto patronum!” _ The first time he met Sirius, then the next and the next and the... _ “EXPECTO PATRONUM!” _ Fine! Fine! Kneeling on a bed, red eyes before him, a _ warmwarmwarm _ in the center of his chest, _ “Expecto-” _ a touch. _ “Expect-” _

Harry falls to his knees, back hunched and head hung low toward the ground. A position of defeat. His body aches, but more so his head, like he’s been prodding it for things it doesn’t have, like he’s bruised it. The room is spinning. Why, why, why is it spinning?

Maybe- maybe he has. Bruised it. Maybe his mind is a bruise. Dead blood under healthy skin.

One hand raises though his head remains low, his posture remains hunched—it seems the only part of him with strength left to move. It hangs there, limp and pointed loosely at the dummy. Barely a whisper. _ “Avada Kedavra._”

A flash of green light streams forth from Harry’s palm although he’s barely asked for it, like his magic has simply been waiting, _ hungrily, _hitting the dummy square to its chest and disappearing. A deadly predator, that curse. A silent killer. Dark and sinister.

And Harry begins to sob.


	18. Rope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit shorter than usual, my apologies. i wanted to get something out before college starts up again and life is just very hectic right now!
> 
> with every chapter we creep steadily closer to voldy and harry's reunion. hmm...
> 
> hope everyone is staying safe and happy

Harry does not like Ethyl Caprine.

The witch hasn’t done anything in particular to spur Harry’s dislike, but she doesn’t need to—Harry is more than capable of resenting her on principle alone.

Ethyl is unassuming and peaceful with a face that seems permanently kind. The first time Harry saw her she was standing in the kitchen with Sirius, having a conversation that Harry only paid mind to long enough to ensure it wasn’t about him. Her voice was soft and lilting and Sirius smiled at her as if they’d known each other for a very long time, which from what little information Sirius had given Harry about her it seems like they had. When Ethyl smiled back the entire room seemed to radiate with it.

Afterward Harry stomped up the stairs, scowling.

Harry doesn’t like Ethyl Caprine because she has a voice and a face that reminds Harry of Luna, but the things she says make far more sense. She’s _ logical, _and Harry doesn’t want anyone serenely and logically telling him that he needs to ‘process trauma’. He would rather she be dumb, or at the very least easier to hate.

Harry can’t hate Ethyl Caprine because there are some people impossible to dredge up hatred for, even when you really, really want to- but he can dislike her. Strongly. On principle alone.

The first time Harry met with her she explained how mind healing works. _ Only half of mind healing is magic. Imagine a healthy mind as a length of rope. Things like grief or mental illness or traumatic events can wear on it—sometimes the rope begins to fray or thin out in the middle, or it gets tied in knots, or there are kinks in the rope that need to be twisted back before it can lie flat again. Our goal is to work our way down the rope, beginning to end, until we find the damage your trauma has done and begin to mend it. The rope can’t be mended with my magic alone, but with my magic and your help we can certainly push the process along. This is a two person job. _

Harry didn’t speak throughout the entire first session. Probably he seemed stubborn or prideful, but in truth Harry simply couldn’t speak through the raw panic gripping his throat. Ethyl Caprine, though, gave no outward sign of irritation or impatience or boredom. She seemed perfectly content to sit there with Harry, unbothered by his silence and not attempting to fill it herself, until the hour Harry had promised Sirius ran out.

Ethyl only said, _ I’ll be back in a few days to see you again. If you need me before then I’m only a floo call away. _Ethyl came back and continued coming back. 

A few weeks later and Harry still doesn’t like her.

It has, however, gotten easier.

———

_ Harry, _

_ How are you? I was so relieved when Hermione and Ron told us what happened, and that you’re alright. Although of course I’ve never had any doubt that you’d be alright, it was nice to hear it regardless. I’ve missed you so much. So does Neville. I’ve been spending a lot more time with him lately. He helps me feed the thestrals now (who I’m sure are also missing you desperately. Life must get pretty lonely for them, I’m sure seeing you is always a treat.) _

_ Hogwarts is the same. I’ve been kept fairly busy lately since my things have once again started disappearing, and also because it’s Moon Frog hatching season! Hagrid and I had a long talk about it when I went down to visit him and he told me he felt I should be put in charge of watching out for them. Keep away the Umgubular Slashkilters and all, you know how it is. I appreciated the gesture; it’s hard to know how to care for Moon Frogs if you didn’t grow up around them like I did. You’d love them, Harry, they’re marvelous creatures. _

_ What have you been up to? How is Grimmauld place? I can’t wait until we get to see you again. I’m not sure when, exactly, that will be, but that’s alright. Take your time. We’re all waiting for you when you’re ready. I’m sending you the best editions of the Quibbler that you’ve missed while you’ve been away in case you get bored. Make sure to check out the spectrespecs- they’re brilliant! They’ll let you see the wrackspurts, which can be very beneficial. I hope you enjoy them. _

_ Hermione said you’ve been feeling a bit down, so don’t bother about writing back if it’s too much. It’s enough just to know that you’re back. You’re a special person, Harry Potter, and that’s not just because you’re the chosen one. _

_ Love from me and the Moon Frogs, _

_ Luna _

———

Luna’s letter comes accompanied by four editions of the Quibbler, one of which features a very Quibbler style tribute article to Harry. _ Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Chose-To-Love. _

He doesn’t know how to name the feeling that rises up in his chest at that, but it’s lovely all the same.

———

There is one comfort, however small, to lessen the blow of Ethyl’s visits—that being Draco has to talk to her too.

Predictably, he fought tooth and nail at Remus’ first suggestion of it. Harry had told Remus long before that it would be a hopeless battle, warned him against even attempting, but he tried anyway, ever the martyr. For a few moments Harry was sure Draco would strangle him—completely empty-handed, muggle style, his mother’s wand already out of his possession—before Narcissa herself spoke up.

She’s been less withdrawn in the few weeks since she and Harry spoke. Still quiet, but she joins the rest of them for dinner every day, inserting quiet commentary into their discussions here and there. They don’t discuss it, but Harry can feel Draco’s relief at her presence like a palpable thing. He was afraid he’d lost her.

The first time Remus suggested Draco speak to Ethyl, the one thing that perhaps saved his life was Narcissa’s quiet interruption. _ Draco, I think you should try. _

After everything, Harry hasn’t yet seen Draco able to tell his mother no. Not even once.

Narcissa doesn’t meet with Ethyl; Draco does. He starts two weeks or so after Harry, who is at that point already a few meetings in with Ethyl and beginning to wear under her soft persistence. He gets to watch Draco stomp upstairs stubbornly and sulk just as Harry did, and it’s all he can do not to grin in Draco’s presence, only for sake of self-preservation. He does, after all, sleep in the same room as Draco almost entirely unprotected.

Harry doesn’t like it, he _ doesn’t _ like Ethyl, but he has resigned himself to his fate in a way Draco hasn’t yet managed. The boy huffs and pouts and denies that he’s pouting because _ Draco Malfoy simply does not pout, _and Harry hides his grin behind mugs of tea.

It’s nice, for once, not to be tortured on his own. Draco doesn’t voice the same sentiment, but Harry can feel his reluctant comfort just as palpably as his quiet relief.

Mind healing is… a unique experience. As Ethyl promised, they start at the beginning, which could be any number of places, really. They don’t start at the beginning of Harry’s capture, though. They don’t start at his dream of Sirius or his lone journey to the Department of Mysteries or his clumsy drop of the prophecy—they start in his childhood. (Mind-healing is far more tedious than Harry expected it to be.)

_ Sometimes the rope mends on its own, _ Ethyl told him in an earlier session, one of the first that Harry began to cooperate in. _ Damage from childhood can piece itself together with time or the formation of new relationships. Sometimes forgetting things doesn’t make a difference, but other times as the memory fades the sinews begin to stitch themselves back together. There is no right way to heal. _

Ethyl makes her way along the rope, although Harry still isn’t sure what exactly that _ means. _Ethyl assures him that when she reaches the snags she can’t see what he does. She can feel the trauma, sense where it has damaged him and the extent of it, see where it needs to be mended, but she knows nothing that Harry doesn’t tell her. This, at least, is a comfort; he knows that when the time comes, which it will, he won’t have to talk about Voldemort’s red eyes.

The fraying for him starts early, which is no surprise. If Ethyl has any opinion on this she doesn’t show it, for which Harry privately thanks her—if she pitied him he might never let her in his head again. The damage in his childhood is frequent but not severe. Working out those knots, or frays, or kinks (however Ethyl labels them at the time), doesn’t take much energy out of Harry. She slips into his mind and starts healing and he relives the memory, over and over again, until it feels different. Different is the only way he knows to describe it, however vague. Maybe lighter, meaning both the opposite of dark and the opposite of heavy, or maybe smoother—less like sandpaper that scrapes him raw every time he brushes against it. Whatever it is, that nameless _ different, _Harry relives the memory until it comes. It’s simple at first. Maybe not easy, not effortless, but simple. Childhood, to Harry, feels distant and detached. He cannot picture that boy, can’t remember how it felt to wear his shaking skin.

When they reach Hogwarts, it is no longer simple. On the first day he watches Professor Quirrel unwrap his turban fifty times and it is never, ever different.

By the time they’re nearing the end of January Harry knows they won’t be able to put off Order meetings any longer. The thought that Voldemort has been lying docile since Harry escaped—_especially _ considering Harry escaped—is ludicrous. Harry and Draco have remained completely sheltered from any events outside Grimmauld Place, and the fact is both infuriating and cripplingly relieving. Harry is torn between wanting to know—no, _ needing _to know—what’s happening and wanting (needing) to remain completely ignorant to the extent of damage he’s caused. How many people have died? How much destruction has Voldemort wrought? 

Harry knows, only because he demands it, that none of the Order members have been seriously hurt so far. For the most part they’ve sat back and let the Aurors respond to the scene and play damage control; they know how to pick their battles, and this chaos isn’t theirs. The only battles they’ve _ ever _fought, Harry realizes, have been to protect him. This is a… concerning revelation. Both concerning and reassuring. As long as Harry is here they have no immediate need to fight. Someday, maybe. Maybe soon, but not now.

So when Order meetings do resume, Harry stays out of sight. Out of earshot. He doesn’t even want to eavesdrop, and for perhaps the first time in all of Draco’s life he doesn’t want to either. Instead they stay in their bedroom or the upstairs drawing room or the library, sitting in a heavy silence that neither feels inclined to break. Harry can’t imagine where Draco’s thoughts must be straying, but he knows it can’t be anywhere better than his own. Both boys wear too many scars. So Harry puts up charms to block all sound from reaching them and all sound from creeping out. This way they can almost pretend.

Dumbledore comes back a few times and Harry stays resolutely out of his path. He doesn’t want to see the wizard, doesn’t want to look at him. There’s some deep-seated resentment that Harry is too exhausted to reconcile and Dumbledore doesn’t seek him out. Harry figures that once he becomes of use again Dumbledore won’t hesitate to pull him back into the line of battle, but that’s how it has always been. He hardly thinks it necessary to bother changing things now. At least he knows that he isn’t being left out of anything monumental; monumental things have always involved Harry at the center of them. He was the eye of the goddamn storm. It is a small comfort that Dumbledore has never hesitated to pull him into it.

Harry’s job is so easy in theory—all he has to do is stay still. All he has to do is let the Order pick and choose what battles to fight and stay in Grimmauld Place and remain quiet. Keep the bond closed. Keep his magic in check. Easy instructions, but they leave Harry antsy in his skin. He’s started reading through every book in the library, flipping the pages without touching them and pulling the books from the shelves wordlessly just to have a steady stream of magic making its way out of him. Harry doesn’t even _ like _ to read, for Merlin’s sake. He’s just so sodding _ bored. _Draco notices but offers no solutions or condolences. Harry knows he’s just as sick of it, but neither of them are willing to complain. Their last residence, after all, was a far worse place to be. The guilt of his own ungratefulness gnaws at his skin.

Except.

Except, except, except.

Harry was never bored when Voldemort was near.

———

_ Harry, _

_ Hermione said it was okay for me to write. I hope that came from you and not her. _

_ I can’t believe you’re alive! I hope that doesn’t sound twattish, but gods Harry we spent half a year mourning you. A pretty shit half a year too. Hearing you showed up healthy as a mandrake felt like a dream. Don’t worry about me being too lonely. Luna has roped me into helping her feed the demon horses and she’s just impossible to say no to. You know how she is. _

_ It’s a real bummer no one can see you, but maybe during Easter holiday we can pop in for a visit. Professor Sprout has been letting me use the empty greenhouse in my spare time and I could bring you some things if you’d like. I’ve got all sorts of flowers if you want something bright. Some of them sing carols though, which gets old after a few rounds. _

_ If you write back before holiday you can tell me if you want anything, but if not I’ll bring you some anyway. You don’t have to keep them course, I just figure you might like some color. Place can be pretty dreary, can’t it? _

_ Anyway, I’m glad to hear you’re doing alright. Miss you in the dormitory. _

_ Neville _

———

Harry is too busy to bother with wizarding wars when Ethyl Caprine drags one in every time she walks into Harry’s eyesight.

She comes every other day now, giving Harry a day in between to recover then pushing him back into his torture brutally. That isn’t to say she does it any less kindly, patiently, but kindness and the absence of pain are not mutually exclusive. By the second week of February they’ve reached fourth year, the worst yet. There are snags in the rope here and there from the competition itself—there is only so much fighting for their life a student can do without being damaged—but those are easy. The first task takes less than half a session, the second takes half at most, but those are not what he’s afraid of. With every day he lets Ethyl penetrate his mind, deep enough to feel but not see, his unease grows steadily more difficult to ignore. Soon, too soon, he will be back in that graveyard; he will be tied to that headstone; he will be watching Cedric’s body fall. Far, far too soon, he will be watching Voldemort step out of a cauldron; he will be seeing his eyes burn; he will be hearing his voice for the first time. 

To say Harry is terrified is not enough. 

To say Harry is panicked, to say he wants to find the smallest corner of Grimmauld Place he can possibly fit into and stay there, to say he wants to banish Ethyl from the house forever to avoid going any further, to say that he wants to crawl out of his skin, run away, disappear, spontaneously combust—all of these things would still not be enough.

It is a corrosive thing, an acidic thing, a panic hollowing him from the inside out.

He doesn’t want to watch Cedric die.

He doesn’t want to see the red eyes of a monster, to have to place them beside the eyes that pinned him in place from the foot of his bed, the eyes that belonged to the thing that held him on his bedsheets. The same pair. Except.

Except, except, except.

Sometimes those red eyes looked agonizingly, heart wrenchingly human. 

———

Harry writes a letter, balls it up, tosses it onto the floor.

Fresh parchment. New quill, same ink. He writes different words that don’t seem to say anything different. Harry feels like he’s taking them apart and sorting them into piles then rearranging them on the page; there’s no more substance to them, nothing new with each draft.

Tears the parchment. Tosses it at his feet. Fuck.

“How many forests do you suppose you’ve mowed down by now, Potter?” Malfoy drawls from the opposite couch, not bothering to look away from his book. He has his head against the armrest and the rest of his body sprawled out, an open copy of some biography or another resting on his stomach. He’s been keeping Harry quiet, steady company. Harry didn’t ask, never has to. “Half the Forbidden Forest, I reckon, and a few more,” he continues when Harry neglects to respond. “What’s the issue, anyway?”

“I don’t know what to say to them,” Harry huffs in frustration, tossing his quill down and watching ink blot on the already spoiled length of parchment.

“They’re your friends, aren’t they? Why’s it so hard?”  
“Because,” Harry flaps his hands loosely in the air in front of him as if it furthers his point, “they think I’m someone else- or something. I _ want _to talk to them and seem normal, seem like Harry, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to fake it, even in a,” he glares down at the parchment as if it can feel his ire, “bloody useless letter.”

“Have you considered, Potter,” Draco says boredly, finally tilting his head to the side to look at him properly, “that they just aren’t your friends anymore?”

Harry blinks. “What?”

“You’re different now, obviously, and they’re expecting you not to be. Isn’t that tiring? Do you really want to keep that up?”

“I-” Harry stops when he realizes he doesn’t have a convincing answer to that, one way or the other.

Draco takes it as a _ no _anyway. “So leave it, Harry. Try again when they realize that the version of you they remember isn’t coming back. Until then,” he shrugs, leaving the sentence there, hanging in the air unfinished.

Draco looks bored by the subject, face impassive as he turns back to his reading, but Harry studies the slight hardness there.

Harry thinks there might be some truth in what Draco’s saying; he also wonders how scared, exactly, Draco is of losing him.

———

_ Harry, _

_ Thank Merlin you’re alive, I can finally quit feeling bad for taking captain. _

_ Only joking. _

_ Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m a bit relieved you aren’t coming back to Hogwarts this term. With Wood gone I finally got promoted to Quidditch captain, mostly due to your prior commitments. I hope you don’t take it harshly when I say I don’t want you kicking me from my spot. I have too much fun yelling at the boys. _

_ Don’t know if Hermione mentioned, but I’ve been dating Dean Thomas. He’s been really good with all the grief and stuff, dead best friend and all, so it’ll be weird keeping this from him, but you don’t need to worry. Secret’s safe with me. I can tell how much he and Seamus miss you though, if that means anything. It’s not just us, you know, it’s everyone. Even the Slytherin’s seem to miss being able to talk shit about you with good conscience--who knew they had hearts? They’re more wrecked by Draco being gone than anything, but that’s expected. I hope you two have managed not to kill each other. _

_ In all seriousness, though, I’m so glad you’re safe. I’m sure Mum and Dad will get us all to Grimmauld Place for holiday so we can see you. Looking forward to giving you a hug. I hope you’ve stayed tough, because Quidditch has made me quite buff, you know. Don’t want to break you. Ha ha. _

_ Missing you tons. _

_ Love, Ginny, _

———

Ink blotted. Crumbled paper. Huffs of frustration.

Draco looking at him knowingly.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Shut up.”

———

The next death comes exactly one month after the murder of Piers Polkiss. Harry isn’t shocked by it, isn’t even affected really, which is perplexing to every member of the household but Harry himself. This death, after all, was a certain Vernon Dudley, the man who raised him.

Harry doesn’t think anyone other than Dumbledore knows the extent of the abuse Harry endured under the Dursley’s hands. Perhaps if anyone had they would have taken him from them, found another option, but Dumbledore kept Harry’s home environment a secret to all but himself. How was anyone to know? Dumbledore alone had the power to save him, and he chose not to.

Just as they did Piers Polkiss, Sirius and Remus mull over the situation with the assumption that Vernon’s death was a punishment or a threat. They note that it wasn’t a particularly effective one, as Harry seems hardly upset by it, but they collectively decide to leave that can of worms for Ethyl to sift through and stick to the matter at hand—what angle is Voldemort coming from? Why pick Harry’s loved ones out one at a time, rather than kill them in one fell swoop. Why attack his family when Harry is under the Order’s protection? They bounce the idea that it’s more a psychological game than anything, but Harry knows that isn’t right either. There is no way to explain to them without revealing far too much, but this was not a punishment. It is a gift. Always a gift.

“Have there been other attacks?” Harry asks, sitting at the kitchen table with the two men. Draco isn’t in the room. “Other than the ones the Aurors have been responding to, I mean.” As Harry understands, those have been minor and almost always cleared out by the time the Aurors even make it to the scene. There have been deaths, but the count has been lower than anyone can reason. 

“No,” Remus says, and Harry doesn’t think he could look more concerned if the answer was _ yes, _“but there are other concerns. We have some suspicions that the Ministry isn’t secure.”

“You mean… there are Death Eaters posing as Ministry workers?” His mind briefly flashes with the image of Bellatrix dressed up in business casual holding a briefcase, and it’s a considerable effort not to laugh. Maybe this is hysteria. Or maybe Harry just… doesn’t care. About Vernon. About much at all.

“Or the Imperius curse is being used liberally. Either way, the Ministry is unstable and impossible to trust right now.”

“So the question,” Sirius asks, “is why he’s attacking _ you _ when he doesn’t seem at all interested in targeting _ us. _”

“And,” Remus continues, voice more hesitant, “why he wants you so badly when it’s clear he doesn’t want you dead.”

The room falls into a hush. There it is: the question everyone has been tiptoeing around, avoiding like cracked glass. Why hadn’t Voldemort killed Harry months ago when he’d captured him in the Department of Mysteries? Why hold him hostage but leave him physically unmarred, healthy even? What reason could Voldemort possibly have to keep Harry alive?

But more importantly, _ most _importantly—if he wants Harry so badly, why hasn’t he targeted the Order? How have they survived a month unbothered when Voldemort surely knows they have him?

The realization that Voldemort is averse to hurting Harry even now, even if it’s by means of killing the people Harry loves, hasn’t quite hit him until this moment. It’s a stunning thing. He’s killing the Dursley’s because he’s _ furious, _but knows Harry harbours no fondness for them; the Order will remain safe so long as Harry wishes them to be. He could tell them this and with the explanation soothe their every fear and confusion, but Harry won’t.

Some part of him is ashamed of his connection to Voldemort, that he kept it a secret for so long and has continued to even when it’s more important now that it has ever been. There’s a part of him that’s scared to admit what he’s been keeping a secret for half a decade, afraid of what they’ll think of him. Harry knows these things, but he also knows that there is something deeper and far more shameful behind his refusal to speak of it; Harry is terrified that they will take Voldemort from him.

Instead, he says, “I am alive and you are safe.” He looks away, eyes burning but mercifully dry. “Does it honestly matter why?”

To that neither man says anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every time someone asks me not to abandon this fic i laugh from the depths of my soul. you think i have control? you think i can escape this monster so easily? fear not, my friends, i couldn't even if i wanted to.
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	19. Vice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW:
> 
> Very brief rhetorical discussion of su***de with Ethyl. The word is written often and the effects/repercussions of it are discussed.
> 
> It starts just after- “Won’t that be worth it, then? Won’t it kill him, too?” - and ends right after- if he is capable of being saved—if Harry could even dare.
> 
> The entirety is about 300 words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my, I apologize for the wait on this chapter. College is up and running and I'm a freshman, so I'm sure you can imagine that transitioning into dorm living amidst a pandemic is a stressful affair. Now that we're a few weeks in and I have a good sense of my work schedule I can integrate my writing into it, so with any luck you won't have to wait longer than two weeks again!
> 
> If you're lucky this will be the second to last chapter of part 2, and the next chapter will be both the bond reveal and the reunion, oh boy. Start preparing yourselves now. If I lose track of my self-control it could be split in two.
> 
> As always, I hope you're all keeping yourself safe and being gentle with yourselves and your mental health in this bizarre year. Life will get easier soon, hang in there <3

Most of February passes without incident. The house is quiet with Hogwarts back in session and nothing pressing enough to call for constant Order presence aside from their weekly meetings, so much of Harry’s time is spent lounging around the house with Draco and trying not to crawl out of his skin. He begins trying to teach Draco wandless magic and the boy catches on surprisingly quickly. Within a few weeks he’s mastered simple practical spells, though dueling magic hasn’t been nearly as easy for him to achieve. The lessons are a great outlet for Harry’s constantly brimming magic as well, so the first fortnight passes without incident.

In the third week of February he and Ethyl reached the graveyard. He could sense her hesitance before they started, knew she could see just how badly this had damaged him, but she must have had some blind faith, some blind belief that he could handle what was about to be done.

Harry watched Voldemort step out of the cauldron only once.

He knows he’s sick but only sporadically remembers why. Sometimes he doesn’t remember he’s sick at all; sometimes he believes he’s back in that room. Sometimes he believes he’s in Grimmauld Place and sometimes he’s sure it’s a trick of his mind, that he could not possibly be seeing Sirius’ face above him, fear etching its features.

He slips in and out of lucidity. When he wakes someone is forcing potions and water down his throat or casting their wand over him or biting their nails. He never wakes alone, which is as disconcerting as it is comforting—comforting when he remembers where he is and disconcerting when he doesn’t.

When he’s lucid he understands he’s been slipping in and out of fever dreams, but when he’s trapped in a bout of confusion he’s sure he’s hallucinating again. He thinks of Voldemort often, but before he can follow the train of thought further it dissolves, as most do.

He understands that seeing Nagini should not be a comfort and it somehow still is. He swears that she eases the discomfort he’s in. At the very least he’s simply happy to see her. He can sense her anxiety just as palpably as he can sense Sirius’ as he hovers above Harry’s bed; she is always winding around his ankles in figure eights and hissing insistently, butting her head against his shins. He is always comforting her the most he can manage in his feverish state. She’s never liked seeing him sick.

At one point or another he wakes up to a magical plant and three copies of _ The Quibbler _ on his nightstand, as well as a letter addressed in Hermione’s handwriting. This time he’s seized with the urge to write back but can’t stay awake long enough to do so, let alone put together an entire parchment of coherent thought. He rubs a leaf between his thumb and forefinger and pulls it back to sniff. It smells sweet like chocolate, the leaves rich and purple. A note stuck to the pot says _ Eat me! _

Harry loves his friends, he realizes weakly, and marvels at the fact that somewhere along the way he’d forgotten.

Once he wakes and asks the person above him for Draco, and the person responds that he _ is _Draco. When Harry reaches for his hand he doesn’t protest, just drops his forehead to rest on where they sit entwined on the bed. Harry loves Draco, too. Loves Sirius and Remus and Tonks. Loves that they have always chosen to save him.

In one of his clearer moments, Ethyl comes.

“Harry,” she says, wasting no time on formalities, “I need to know what memory you were seeing.”

Harry doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want to give himself the opportunity to let anything slip. He’s aware enough to bite his tongue.

Her eyes crinkle—concern, not frustration. Ever the saint, Ethyl. “If I don’t know the trigger I can’t help you. I need you to tell me in order to bring you back.”

_ Bring me back, _ Harry thinks absently. _ From where? What’s it so important I get back to? _

Harry means to say _ I can’t tell you about it _but instead says, “I can’t tell you about him.”

_ Him. Him. Him. _

_ My virtue and my vice. He’s mine, isn’t he? They expect me to let them have him? _

“Him,” Ethyl repeats. “Do you mean Voldemort?” Harry is vaguely surprised both by her bluntness and her willingness to say his name, but Ethyl has never been one to tiptoe around sensitive subjects.

“No,” Harry denies. Then, “Yes, maybe.” He’s slipping. It’s so goddamn hot in here.

“You saw him?”

“Always,” Harry responds, then wonders if he answered the right question.

“Who is Voldemort to you, Harry?” Ethyl asks.

Perhaps if Harry had been more lucid or less hot, perhaps if his thoughts hadn’t been so hazy and impossible to focus on, perhaps if he’d been more aware he would have answered differently, but Harry is none of these things. Harry is feverish. Sick. 

He says, “Everything.” Smiles up at Ethyl. “A contradiction. He’s a goddamn trainwreck, is what he is.”

Ethyl, for her credit, takes this in stride. “Do you know why he’s made you sick?”

“Yes,” Harry says, but he’s asleep before any other questions are asked.

And the next time he wakes it is, of course, Voldemort. He’s standing at the end of Harry’s bed as he did weeks ago, though this time Harry is plagued with an entirely different sort of illness.

“You’re here,” Harry says softly. His hand twitches like he might reach out for him but there is far too much space between the two of them to reach. ”Why are you here?”

“You came to me,” Voldemort says simply.

“That was an accident, I think,” Harry admits. “I’m sick.”

“You’re sick?” Voldemort asks sharply, studying his feverish form on the bed.

“It’s temporary,” Harry placates, although he doesn’t have any solid evidence to back up the claim. He _ hopes _ it’s temporary, and it’s likely to be, but things far more against the odds have befallen him, after all; death by therapy might not even make top five. “It’s just a fever.”

Voldemort seems to accept this as his eyes slip off of Harry to scan the rest of the room. Every few seconds they flick back to the boy like Voldemort is reminding himself he hasn’t vanished then continue their study. “This is different,” he muses. “Where is this?”

“You don’t honestly believe I can tell you that.” Harry is watching Voldemort closely. He knows that this is a dream because he isn’t burning alive in his skin to be against him, but he’s pretty sure this is Voldemort’s actual consciousness. Just as his claim on illness Harry has no true evidence to align with this, but he thinks he’s right anyway. There is a feeling to Voldemort now that’s genuine in its complexity—buzzing with anxiety and restlessness, relief and impatience. Longing, starkly different than the hunger Harry has grown accustomed to. It’s too strong to justify how far Voldemort is from Harry.

“You can’t touch me, can you?” Harry asks.

“No,” Voldemort answers. He almost sounds like he’s in pain. “I never can.”

Harry brushes aside the statement and studies him. “You look different.”

He does, somehow, although Harry can’t put his finger on it. Something about his features look less snakelike, closer to human than Harry has ever seen them before. “Your doing,” Voldemort responds. “It grows worse by the day.”

Harry continues to trace his features, trying to pinpoint the difference. His bones are less angular, less severe. His brow is softer, his cheekbones not so violent. “I think you look… nice,” Harry allows.

Voldemort snorts out a laugh and Harry blinks thrice. He’s never heard Voldemort make a sound like that before. His head tilts back a bit and Harry sees it—his nose is raised. Not like it should be, not even close, but it’s surely higher than it was the last time Harry saw him. When his gaze lowers his eyes are almost… warm. Harry feels as if he’s been hit with a severe bout of whiplash. 

“I’m sure you do, Harry, but it’s becoming increasingly harder to explain to those who follow me for my monstrous persona why I look less monstrous by the week.”

“What’s happening to you?”

“_You’re _happening to me,” Voldemort responds, and the amusement falls off his face. “Your magic is affecting me.” Harry thinks about his explosive tendencies and his inability to cast a Patronus—a light spell that once came so easily to him. Were they trading? Was he destined to become Voldemort?

Harry’s attention is brought back to him as the man raises his hand absently, seemingly studying his fingernails. “It isn’t so bad, really.”

“Is this a dream?” Harry asks suddenly.

Voldemort brings his attention back to him. “Oh, surely. I can’t imagine you’d ever speak to me so civilly.” Harry’s mouth opens and closes a few times. Voldemort thinks this is _ his _dream? “But it’s no matter. It’s not much longer you’ll be away from me.”

Harry’s pulse spikes. “And why is that?”

“Neither of us has the strength.” Before Harry can decide on the appropriate response to that Nagini materializes at the foot of his bed. “Oh, my,” Voldemort sighs. “That will be my call.”

“Your call?”

“Nagini is the one to drag me back. Call her a dinner bell. Better to be dragged by her than stuck here, for if given the choice surely I would never leave.” Harry can’t speak. “Stay safe, Harry. It can’t be much longer.”

“Wait!” Harry says rushedly, and Voldemort stops.

“Yes?”

“You’re-” Harry stops. “How are you?”

Voldemort’s brow furrows before he smiles. An absolutely disarming smile. “I’m well enough, Harry. You are the only thing missing from me.” And far too soon Voldemort has gone.

Nagini remains, crossing the bed to lie across Harry’s thighs. He lowers his hand to rest on her back, stroking absently. “_Won’t you tell him_?”

“_What purpose would it serve _?”

Harry bites his lip. “_None, I suppose. _”

Nagini hisses softly in agreement. There is nothing to come of giving Voldemort hope, now, and certainly nothing to come of missing him.

———

Harry’s fever lasts three days before it breaks and it takes another four to fully recover, but by the last week of February he’s good as new. The first thing he does is write back to Hermione, responding to both their original letters and the additional one Hermione sent while he was sick. He’s sitting in the library with Draco’s contemplative gaze prickling on the back of his neck.

“I can feel your judgement from here,” Harry says over his shoulder.

“No judgement,” Draco says wholly unconvincingly, “you just seem less frustrated now than you did before.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry thinks back to his week in bed, to waking up to a purple plant on his bedside. The plant, as it turns out, tastes just like chocolate, although the texture is a bit disconcerting. “I sort of realized I miss them.”

“They’re never going to understand,” Draco says, not unkindly.

“I know,” Harry responds, and means it. 

———

_ Hermione, _

_ I’m sorry for the wait for my return letter, I came down with a bit of a cold as you know. I’m feeling completely fine now, so don’t worry yourself. I’m getting enough of that from Sirius. _

_ Thanks for all of your letters, they were great. I’m really grateful for all of you, you know, and that you guys are still sticking with me through all of this. I know I’ve seemed a bit off, but it’s nothing to do with you. I just want you to know that. It’s taking me time to readjust is all. It’s weird being back after everything. _

_ Can you pass messages along to the others? Five letters is a bit much for me, I think. _

_ Tell Ginny I say congrats on captain and I’m really happy for her and Dean. He’s a great kid, they deserve each other. Tell her not to go easy on the boys. Be meaner, actually. If they don’t come back with champion’s cup this year I’ll be deeply disappointed. You can also tell her that I haven’t strangled Draco yet, or vice versa. We’re actually friends now, imagine that. I hope I’m not too much of a twat for being a _ _ little _ _ smug that the Slytherins have to feel bad now. _

_ Tell Neville that I’d love some plants come Easter. This place _ _ is _ _ a bit dreary. I trust his judgement, so no requests from me. Also, the chocolate plant, whatever it is, is amazing. Draco whined about the texture, but I love it. What’s it called? And I want to hear more about the rest of the plants he’s been raising. What do the ones that carol sing? Surely not Christmas songs in Spring. And the thestrals, what’s it like taking care of something you can’t see? _

_ Tell Luna I’m very sorry about her missing belongings, and to try a ‘Vestigia’ charm. She’ll be able to keep track of them when they disappear, that way. Doesn’t much help the disappearing, but at least they aren’t permanently lost. Tell her I said thank you for the copies of The Quibbler, and for the spectrespecs. I tried them out. No wrackspurts as far as I can tell, but I’ll keep a look out. So what exactly are Moon Frogs, and what was it like growing up with them? The only thing I grew up with was a cousin that sort of looked like a frog, and that isn’t nearly as fun. Tell Luna to send my love for Hagrid the next time she sees him. I’ll bet she can make him feel it, she’s a little magic like that. And tell her I’m glad she’s taking care of the thestrals, and that everyone is very lucky for her huge heart. _

_ As far as you and Ron, just know that I miss you guys more than anything. You’re my best friends, I don’t know how I lived without you. I’m just really grateful that I ran into Mrs. Weasley in the station and we saved you from that dumb troll. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if we hadn’t. _

_ And Ron, about that bit you added into the letter that I can’t write down, it’s about bloody time. I can hear Hermione lecturing us about platonic affection in male friendships, so I’ll say that I love you too. _

_ I can’t wait to see you two come Easter. I’d love for Neville and Luna to visit, too, and I’m sure Ginny will come along with you two. This time I’ll even give out hugs. _

_ Stay safe. _

_ Signed, Harry _

_ ——— _

“What’s today?” Harry asks at dinner.

“Thursday,” Sirius says around a mouthful of food.

“Manners,” Narcissa scolds, and Harry tries to smother a smile. She’s become comfortable enough to scold people for their table manners. Draco says this is as good a sign as they could possibly receive.

“The date,” Harry clarifies. 

This time Sirius swallows loudly before he responds. Narcissa’s nose wrinkles, but as he didn’t do anything expressly impolite says nothing. “The twenty-fifth.”

“Three days,” Harry says.

Draco looks at him oddly. “What?”

“The twenty-eighth. December Piers was murdered, January my Uncle Vernon. Three days before the next death.”

The table falls into a hush. “Who will it be?” Remus asks.

Harry bites his lip. “Petunia, probably. He would be saving Dudley for last.” They don’t ask why he thinks that and he’s glad.

“What do you want us to do?”

“What can you do? Without me there the protection charm my mother left on the house will have already fallen. Send Order members? He’ll find a way around them.” He pauses, then adds thoughtfully, “Or through them.”

“You just want to let it happen?” Draco inquires. Harry is thankful for the lack of judgement in his voice, or rather the lack of any inflection at all. Draco is blessedly unbothered by flimsy morals.

“I can’t think of anything we could do that would help more than it would harm. If he wants to kill Petunia he’ll kill her.” Sirius is looking at Harry like he doesn’t recognize him. “What?” Harry asks, more snappish than he intends.

“That just seems so…” He trails off.

“Heartless,” Draco supplies helpfully. Harry glances at him with only slight exasperation.

“Callous,” Remus corrects evenly. “It’s out of character.”

“I’m sick of having a savior complex,” Harry says. “It isn’t my job. Isn’t yours either,” he adds, looking at the two men pointedly in turn. Sirius purses his lips and Harry huffs. “Did you care for Petunia?”

A lengthened pause. “Not particularly.”

“And if I were to tell you she abused and neglected me for all of my childhood? Do you have even a passive wish to save her?” The shock on both he and Remus’ face is not nearly as satisfying as Harry wishes it would be.

“She-” Sirius swallows. “Truly?”

“I slept in a cupboard until I was twelve. I’m small still because I was malnourished in my childhood.” His sharp eyes on Sirius are relentless. “Are you really so eager to risk the lives of our Order to save her?”

“No,” he relents finally, and his eyes harden. “I’m not.”

Harry settles back into his chair casually and the rest of the room sits in a tense hush. “So we wait,” Harry remarks. “Three days. If you’re bothered don’t think about it.”

Finally Draco claps, breaking the atmosphere. “You heard the lad. A second helping of potatoes, please?”

The morning of the twenty-eighth Harry catches Sirius’ eyes across the sitting room and he nods slightly. And that’s that.

———

Harry was delirious in his fever, but not so delirious as to forget the two most significant moments: Ethyl’s visit, and Voldemort’s.

Voldemort’s visit, Harry is entirely convinced, was not fabricated, wasn’t a fever dream, wasn’t twisted wishful thinking. It was real, maybe the realest thing Harry has felt in weeks. While Harry’s subconscious seems to have put up a defensive block between his dreams and Voldemort, the other’s has done no such thing. Voldemort has been seeing Harry for weeks, clinging to his dreams of him to stay sane. Seeing Harry didn’t make him sick, and talking to Voldemort—the real one, not the one of nightmarish memory—seemed almost to heal him. Harry understands that from the moment they created this mess he always has. 

There it is again—somehow he is both Harry’s poison and his antidote, his phoenix and flame, a curse hand-stitched for him with care. There has never been a torture more perfectly designed; no coincidence could be so catastrophic.

Harry wants to touch him again. Oh, what a sin.

Ethyl Caprine does come back, getting Harry alone only after assuring a very protective godfather that they wouldn’t be doing any more mind-healing and that there was no chance of Harry getting sick again. They sit across from each other in silence, Harry perched pensively on the couch and Ethyl across from him in the armchair.

She speaks first. “Are you going to give anything up, or should I start talking?”

It isn’t unfriendly or cruel or biting. Saint Ethyl, as always. It’s an honest inquiry: _ Will you tell me yourself, or will I have to? _

Harry says, “You know.”

“I’ve had a strong suspicion,” Ethyl admits. “There are very few things capable of causing the sort of reaction you had, and that paired with our conversation at your bedside…” She looks at him, gaze kinder than Harry could ever expect it to be in these circumstances. “Yes, I know. You’d be amazed at how many ways there are for a wizard to drive their soulmate into mind-healing.”

Harry’s throat closes as the word is spoken aloud. He’s never dared speak it, not even to himself. He feels as if his chest has been torn open and he’s been put on display. “Will you tell?” he manages, for there really is no other question.

Ethyl looks at him quietly for far too long and Harry thinks he might lose it. He doesn’t have the stability for this sort of waiting. “I won’t,” she says finally.

If Harry was standing he would have collapsed. “Why?” he gasps out. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“It is not my secret to tell,” Ethyl says simply, “nor my choice to make, but there _ is _ a choice to be made. You know that, Harry. You know you can’t keep this up forever.”

“I’ve managed this long, haven’t I?”

“Have you?” Ethyl asks gently. There’s a furrow at the corner of her eyes and a press to her lips that looks deeply and achingly sad. Harry is shocked silent at the expression. For him? This heartbreak is for him? “You can’t keep this up forever. Soulmates aren’t designed to be apart once they’ve found one another. They are not _ allowed _to be. This will kill you.”

“Won’t that be worth it, then? Won’t it kill him, too?”

“What do you think?” Harry doesn’t have an answer to that, but he doesn’t think Ethyl really wants an answer, anyway. “Do you not believe there’s some other way? Suicide is never the only solution. It is _ a _solution, but not the only one.”

Harry has never considered it with that word- _ suicide. _ It sounds so ugly that way, so gruesome. Living without Voldemort now _ is _ suicide, he realizes; no word is gentle enough to take away the truth of that. But is there no case in which suicide _ is _the answer? Hasn’t Harry only ever been the exception to every rule? Except. Except, except, except.

“I don’t want to die,” Harry admits softly, shame twisting his stomach. To admit it is to betray every plan he’s ever had for himself and his life. He was never supposed to live past twenty; he was never supposed to have a future; he was never supposed to _ want, _not even to live, and now Harry does. Achingly. Desperately.

“So _ don’t,_” Ethyl whispers. “Don’t.”

“Do I even have a choice?”

“Oh, Harry.” Her face is etched with sympathy. Not pity—Ethyl has never pitied him. “Of course you do. But I have never lied to you, so I won’t for a second pretend that having a choice isn’t far, far more difficult.”

Harry has to choose. Choose to live or choose to die; choose the sure way out or the dangerous, unsure path; choose to kill Voldemort or choose to save him, if he is capable of being saved—if Harry could even dare.

Yes, Harry agrees, this is much harder. It was easier to live his whole life stuck between a rock and a hard place, easier to deny himself the responsibility of deciding. The only people he wanted to save were _ his _people; he never even considered that saving Voldemort could save everyone without requiring any sacrifice at all.

“You believe I can save him?” he asks tentatively.

“Never ask a mind-healer if we believe someone is hopeless, Harry.” Ethyl smiles and Harry feels his chest open up for oxygen for the first time since she uttered the word _ soulmate. _ “The answer will always be no.”

———

Just before the first Order meeting of March Voldemort begins to lose it.

Draco and Harry are listening at the door. “This is extremely out of character. For all of his manic actions, he’s never attacked muggles needlessly.”

“He’s just killed Petunia and Harry still hasn’t had any strong emotional reaction. He’s surely growing frustrated at the lack of response.”

“But how far will he go? This is stupidly dangerous, and Voldemort is not an unintelligent creature.”

“We’ll wait through the next week. The Aurors have already begun their damage control. It isn’t our place to step in yet.”

The second week of March brings worse news.

“There is no strategy, no meaning. It’s just violence.”

“He must be trying to lure Harry into communicating with him. His savior complex is an easy weapon to manipulate, and Voldemort has utilized it time and time again. That manipulation is what had him captured in the first place.”

“He can’t know.”

A snort and Sirius’ voice. “He already knows, undoubtedly. He’s far too nosy for his own good. Watch- Harry?” Harry shuts his eyes. _ God dammit. _“Step in here, won’t you?”

Harry looks at Draco desperately and the boy smirks, quirking his eyebrow, then shoves Harry around the corner. _ Prat. _ Every eye of the Order comes to rest on him. 

“Er- hello.”

Remus speaks from beside Sirius. “Draco my friend, please join us.” Harry coughs loudly and after a pause Draco steps unabashedly around the corner.

“Hello,” he greets the room with a grin.

“No keeping secrets from these two,” Sirius announces, “believe me, we’ve tried. Best to be open about it, yes?”

A glance at Dumbledore reveals eyes dancing with amusement. “I suppose you make a compelling case. Harry, Draco, please take a seat.”

And so they do.

“We have to decide whether we want to involve ourselves in this,” Tonks says. “Putting ourselves in danger directly places Harry in danger, as he’s proven plenty that he’d run into the fire for anyone.” Harry makes a sort of huffy sound and she raises her eyebrows. “Unless you’d like to correct me?” Harry doesn’t, so she continues. “Is the risk worth the possible casualties? And is staying uninvolved worth the possible casualties?”

It’s a long expanse of quiet before Mad-Eye Moody answers. “We protect ourselves first.”

No one argues against this, so they agree to wait another week.

It takes two days of wheedling before Draco and Harry have managed to force the details out of Sirius. There’s been three attacks on muggles in the past two weeks—all seemingly without reason, all with high rates of casualties. The Statute of Secrecy, something that’s always been at the core of Voldemort’s political beliefs, is in significant danger. His actions are reckless and uncalculated, both of which are traits Voldemort has never exhibited. The light side is afraid, and fairly so.

Voldemort is targeting Harry’s incessant need to protect, and it’s working.

Atop all of this, Harry realizes almost like an epiphany that he doesn’t want Dudley to die.

All of this adds up to a very desperate fugitive who has to make a choice. He has to choose. It is the only thing to do. 

But first comes damage control—damage control and promises.

So in the third week of March—one week before the day Dudley is scheduled to die—Harry once again finds himself in the attic trying to cast a Patronus.

Harry tried before to no avail, but this is different. This is _ desperate, _and this time he won’t be denying what he knows is true.

Harry can’t conjure a Patronus the way he used to. He can’t think of his mother or his friends or the first time he saw Hogwarts, because all of that belongs to some distant life Harry only loosely associates with himself, now. That happiness belongs to a boy not entirely himself, and it is not enough.

Harry will not deny the undeniable; he will not lie to himself any longer.

So when Harry closes his eyes he doesn’t reach for an old life. Instead, he thinks of red eyes. Not red eyes in a graveyard, a monster stepping out of a cauldron. Not red eyes in a barren room and a burnt table and scarred wrists, red eyes like torture, red eyes like pain. He does not picture red eyes like _ monster _; he pictures red eyes like redemption, like tentative hope, like desperation without fear.

He sees red eyes standing at the end of his bed, human. A face like grief, like relief, like helpless confusion, the first time Harry thought, _ If things were different, this man could be my soulmate. _ He pictures red eyes on pallid skin wrapped in a dark cloak beside him on a bed, Harry wanting nothing more than to touch him, wanting nothing more than to give in. Harry thinks about that feeling—the breathlessness, the awe and the bliss. Harry thinks about that moment in the Manor, just before Dobby’s hold on him tightened and he was pulled away and away and away—the split second that he wanted to stay. Harry thinks _ warmwarmwarm. _

It is not joy, not really; it’s something more.

His eyes are closed when he finally says it and so he feels rather than sees what he knows to be true—it worked. Of course it worked; he’d been searching for hope in all the wrong places. 

He opens his eyes not to a stag, but to a snake.

“Nagini,” he breathes, but it isn’t Nagini. This snake is all light, winding through the air as if suspended there. She certainly _ looks _like Nagini, though. Moves like her, too. Peculiar.

It takes Harry another three tries to speak, but his snake waits patiently. “Until May,” he tells her. “Give me until May. Let me say my goodbyes and I will come back to you. Don’t kill Dudley, don’t hurt anyone else needlessly. Just- wait. Wait for me.” He thinks that’s all he’ll say, but almost unwillingly he adds, “This is killing both of us.” His Patronus wriggles impatiently in the air, not nearly as lazy as Nagini, clearly. “Voldemort,” he says, this time addressing only her. “Go to Voldemort.”

And in the next moment she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	20. Virtue Pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Very brief mention of su**ide. If you want to skip it, safely stop at:  
“Could you have done it forever?”  
and skip right on down to:  
He pauses contemplatively. “You have to understand..."
> 
> The whole thing is like 150 words. Seriously, you'll miss it if you blink.
> 
> Be safe <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've lied again, my apologies. If this chapter feels incomplete, that would be because it's split in half, and somehow managed to be six thousand words long anyway.
> 
> The second half is mostly written so the wait won't be long. I actually originally planned on holding out and making it a double upload, but fuck it. It's almost Halloween, have a treat.
> 
> Stay safe, be smart, and be gentle with yourselves. Sending love from here.

Harry doesn’t get a response from Voldemort, but neither did he expect to. He still has no access to Harry’s dreams and Harry doubts he has the ability to cast a Patronus even now, but he knows it’s arrived where it needs to. The 28th of March passes and Dudley lives. The violence stops. No one in the Order has the faintest idea why.

Draco, however.

“What did you do,” he demands one night, sitting across from Harry on the bed. They never transitioned into sleeping separately; at some point it began to feel so natural that neither of them could come up with a good enough reason to change it.

“Er- could you narrow down the question?” It’s a lame deflection.

“Knock it off,” Draco snaps. “Seriously. What’d you do, send him an owl?”

“An owl,” Harry repeats, amused. “Sounds foolproof.”

Draco ignores his tone. “A dream? Energy waves through your telepathy thing? Give it up.”

Harry looks at Draco waveringly for a few seconds, debating, weighing the pros and cons. He’ll have to tell someone eventually, but Draco? Could the boy honestly handle it? Better it be Remus or Moody, someone capable of being objective. Draco is too closely tied to Voldemort, he is already too scarred by him.

And Draco is his best friend. Somehow that’s more intimidating.

When Harry doesn’t immediately respond Draco continues more tentatively than before. “You told me about him, remember? I witnessed it firsthand, more or less. I know that he… favors you.” Draco’s face twists a bit at the statement, but he carries on. “It’s bizarre and I don’t pretend to understand it, but I _ saw _it, and I know you don’t like to talk about him, but-” He puffs out his cheeks in a very uncharacteristic gesture of frustration. “We’ve been through enough, haven’t we? For you to trust me?”

_ Yes, _ Harry wants to say. _ Yes, of course we have. _

_ But not with this. _

Instead he grits his teeth together. “I can’t tell you right now, alright? But I will. Soon.”

“Soon?” he repeats. “How soon?”

Harry drops his head, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I don’t know.” It’s honest. When the moment arrives. When it’s right. _ Soon. _He doesn’t know.

“You don’t know,” Draco echoes disbelievingly. “That’s reassuring.”

“A week,” Harry promises, “maybe two. Soon.”

Draco shakes his head then flops down on his back beside Harry. “Bloody unbelievable.”

Harry smiles somewhat bitterly at the ceiling. “You have no idea.”

_ Honest. _

Hogwarts’ holiday feels much too close to Harry. Hermione, Ron and Ginny are scheduled to be back in the third week of April, and as much as Harry sidesteps the thought as often as he can manage he knows that it will be a week of goodbyes. One way or another, whether it be death or departure, Harry won’t be staying long enough to reach summer. The sooner he speaks up the longer he’ll have to prepare, but the words are thick in his throat. The fear is mud in his chest. How does one even begin in revealing a secret like this? How does one prepare?

He feels the days ticking down like he’s carving tallies into the walls.

“Sirius,” he asks one day, “have you ever had a secret that you couldn’t tell anyone?”

Sirius looks at him a bit funny. “James, Peter and I were self-taught animagi by age fifteen so we could keep my secret soulmate, a werewolf, company once a month,” he says, lips quirking up at the corners. “I’ve quite a bit of experience in secrets.”

“Oh,” Harry says a bit sheepishly. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Asking for a friend?” Sirius asks, still lit up with that faintly amused smile.

Harry feels his face heat. “Er- yeah. You could say that.”

Sirius snorts, and hasn’t he always seen right through Harry? “It’s no secret that you have a secret, Harry. We’re absolutely lost to what it is, but it’s clear there’s something you’re afraid of.” He leans forward in his seat, sobering, resting his elbows on his knees and meeting Harry’s eyes like he’s trying to push his next words into the very depths of them. “Whatever you’re scared of—it doesn’t have to be us.”

“You don’t know that,” Harry says. It comes out weaker than he intends.

“Of course I do,” Sirius says. “There is nothing you could possibly have done that wouldn’t be forgivable.”

“That’s a tall promise,” Harry mutters, finally breaking Sirius’ gaze.

There it is again—that mud sluggish in his chest, suffocating and heavy. Two words, a shackle on his right wrist. Harry is chained.

Sirius settles back into his seat and Harry still doesn’t feel safe meeting his eyes. “When you’re ready,” Sirius says, “we’ll be here.”

Sirius, his godfather, feels just as intimidating as Draco does. It seems that the closer he holds people the more daunting it is to fit this into the space between them.

Harry thinks, _ soon, _and time carries on.

The first Order meeting of April is one full of questions. Draco and Harry are, for the first time, permitted to sit in on the meeting from the very beginning. Harry has hardly breathed from the moment he stepped into the room; it has to be today.

As the Order members trickle in Draco casts Harry concerned looks now and again, seemingly the only person picking up on his anxiety. The few times he catches Harry’s eye his look presses for an explanation, but he doesn’t ask. Probably he figures he’ll find out soon enough.

Harry fights valiantly against every instinct telling him to run.

Eventually everyone but Dumbledore has arrived, who Moody informs the group has once again gone into an extended absence. Harry hopes to all things good that this absence will be briefer than the last, or at the very least Dumbledore be easier to contact. His timing, as always, is admirably inconvenient.

Tonks begins with a blunt, “It’s been very quiet.”

“Radio silence,” Kingsley agrees.

“It’s concerning,” she continues. “This quiet after all of that violence…”

“He’s wasted too much time on petty attacks.” Moody. “Even with the work we know he’s been doing in the ministry he’s moving too slowly—he’ll be gearing up for something bigger.”

“He missed a date,” Sirius cuts in abruptly. “He was supposed to kill Dudley Dursley on the twenty-eighth and he didn’t.” When no one but Remus seems to follow he adds, “Harry, your explanation please.”

Harry flinches slightly but nods. “He killed Piers on the twenty-eight of December, Vernon the twenty-eighth of January, Petunia February— Dudley should have been murdered last week.”

Sirius adds, “And unless any of you have heard differently the boy was perfectly fine the last time I checked. A little torn up by the fat aunt’s bulldogs, maybe, but fine.”

Harry’s skin is getting hot. He needs to say it. He just needs to tell them.

“So do we think he’s… hurt?” Tonks asks unsurely.

Remus snorts. “Not likely.”

It shouldn’t be this hard.

“Well he didn’t do it out of the kindness of his own heart,” Mrs. Weasley says waspishly, clearly low on patience.

_ Just say it. _

_ Just say it. _

_ Just say it. _

“I told him not to,” Harry blurts.

The entire room seems to freeze mid-breath.

Moody, as dependably stoic as ever, is the first to recover. “What?”

Harry is once again seized by the primal need to run—anywhere at all. He can’t be in this room, he can’t be under these eyes, he can’t be so close to revealing the secret that he’s kept guarded since he was beaten and battered and eleven years old, lonely, longing. 

Harry forces the words out through his teeth. “I told him not to.”

“I bloody _ knew it,_” Draco groans after a long pause. Harry smothers the urge to elbow him in the side. “Better start talking now, Potter.”

“I-” He stalls, gnawing on his bottom lip. He doesn’t want to look at the room, doesn’t want to see their faces. He says weakly, “I didn’t want Dudley to die.”

Sirius’ tone is carefully leveled, but only just. There’s a sense of panic underlying everything, completely palpable in the air. “Does he know where you are?”

“No!” Harry’s head snaps up, then again, calmer this time: “No. I would never endanger any of you.”

“If you opened up a connection…” Remus trails off.

Harry tries his hardest not to snap at him. “I didn’t, alright? I would never risk _ any _of your safety, period. That’s insulting.”

“Then how…?” Tonks leaves the question unfinished.

“Oh for Salazar’s sake,” Draco interrupts, “does it matter? The boy just said he _ told Voldemort not to do it _ and he listened.”

It seems to occur to everyone at once that, _ Yes, he did say that, didn’t he? _

_ Battered and beaten and broken. _

_ Run run run run. _

Harry wraps his feet around the legs of his chair like he might be able to chain himself there; his knuckles turn white where he grips the edges of his seat like it might take off without him; he takes a deep breath, steeling himself.

_ Run run run run. _

“He’d do anything to have me back,” Harry says. “Anything.”

“Well of course he would,” Mrs. Weasley agrees haltingly. “The question is why he _ isn’t _ doing anything.”

“No,” Harry says, shaking his head. “You don’t-” he exhales shakily, dropping his head into his hands and knotting his fingers into his hair. He grinds the words out from between his teeth like they’re fighting him. “I don’t know how to make you understand.”

Her words are spoken like someone might to a wounded animal they’re trying not to spook. The fear is still there, carefully restrained in the air, but her voice is gentle. “Understand what, Harry?”

Harry keeps his eyes shut and his head down—it makes this easier. He has to cough the words out of his throat like gravel. “If I asked him to stop he would stop. If I asked him not to kill anyone he wouldn’t. If I asked him to never hurt an Order member again he’d consider you all untouchable in an instant, and if I asked him not to kill my cousin he would leave Dudley be. He will do anything I ask if he believes it will end with me going back to him.” A shaky exhale. “He hasn’t been _ punishing _me.”

“What…” Mr. Weasley draws out slowly, “what are you saying?”

He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, rocking back and forth and willing himself to breathe, willing himself to hold it together because he can’t run, not now. After all, there is nowhere at all for him to go.

He wants to run anyway.

It shouldn’t have to be this difficult.

“Remus,” he chokes. “Everyone leave but Remus.” And despite the absolute absurdity of the request and the lack of space throughout the rest of Grimmauld place and the fact that they’ve all apparated from their residences to be here, the moment is seeped in a desperation so suffocating that no one even thinks to protest.

Until it’s only him and Remus, sitting across from each other in silence.

When Harry looks up he knows he looks a mess. There’s a fear gripping him like he’s never felt fear before. This isn’t fear of the enemy; this isn’t the fear of looking a nest of acromantulas in the face, or a coiled turban falling to the floor, or a frying pan swung at his head; this isn’t fear of a deformed body in a graveyard or dementors circling the lake above his head or asking Cho Chang to the ball; this isn’t even the fear of red eyes in a dimly lit room, of his wrists bound to a table, of the curse on a snake’s tongue.

This is different. He isn’t afraid of monsters, or of dying, not really. 

“You’ll kill me,” Harry whispers hoarsely, looking Remus in the eye. “You’re going to kill me.”

Thick eyebrows furrow, concern pulling at the corners, confusion creasing his already lined face. “What on Earth are you talking about, Harry?”

“You’re going to kill me,” he repeats, because he can’t recall a single combination of words aside from these. 

“Okay,” Remus is nodding and Harry feels a growing distance between Remus and himself. The chair he’s sitting on seems to be drifting away from him. Somewhere, Remus says, “Breathe for a few moments. Focus on breathing,” but Harry doesn’t remember how.

Harry isn’t afraid of dying, not really. He never has been, has never allowed himself to be, but he’s afraid of dying like this. There is no worse way to die than this. 

Remus is saying Harry’s name and Harry isn’t grasping it, then there are hands on either side of Harry’s face and he thinks he might have shouted but Remus doesn’t budge. He’s holding Harry by the face and coming back into focus in increments.

“Come back to me,” he’s saying.

“You’ll kill me,” Harry whispers once again, only half there.

“Explain to me,” Remus says.

There is nothing else to do, no words to speak, nothing in the world he could possibly say.

So Harry holds out his wrist.

———

The Order is sent away with the promise of answers later, but not today. Today is one of privacy, one reserved for Harry to mourn the loss of this secret he’s held onto for years. The absence of it feels like a hole in his chest. He thought that it would be a relief, a weight from his shoulders, and in some ways it is—but in others he feels like he’s lost a part of himself, like he’s given it away.

Harry mourns for the loss of his secret, he mourns the mark on his wrist, he mourns the years he was able to spend never looking it in the eye.

The first time—telling Remus—was the hardest. Afterward Remus goes to fill Sirius in and Harry goes to find Draco. It’s easier to tell him then, and for Draco’s credit he handles it surprisingly well.

“Huh,” he says, measuredly calm albeit gone starkly pale. “That would explain- well. That would explain pretty much everything.”

Harry smiles wryly. “I suppose it would.”

Harry didn’t have to bear witness to Sirius’ reaction, but he can imagine it didn’t go nearly as smoothly as Draco’s. Regardless, when Harry sees him he’s moved past whatever initial panic he might have had and into his godfather default.

The four of them gather in the kitchen afterward—along with Narcissa, after her hesitant request—to discuss it in depth; saying it aloud wasn’t even half the battle.

“He’s losing himself,” Harry tries to explain, “like I am, but probably worse as he’s less stable to begin with. Soulmates aren’t _ meant _ to be put through this—they meet and stay together or they die. Voldemort and I are doing neither, which is why he’s so desperate and why the cards are in my hands. My magic… you’ve seen it. I can't control it, and it- it _ feels _different. He’s like an addict, he can’t stand that I’m gone and I can’t stand being away and-” Harry stops abruptly, shutting his eyes. He calms his breaths. 

“Peculiar,” Remus says softly, and Harry opens his eyes to him looking puzzled. When he catches his eye Remus waves in a _ carry on _gesture, so Harry does.

When he speaks again he sounds very, very small, and still so much larger than he feels. “There’s a part of me,” he says quietly, “that misses him.”

“Did you-” Sirius clears his throat. “Did you ever-?”

“No,” Harry says, not even summoning the strength to sound affronted. “Never. We barely bonded. We tried, kind of by accident, and he… well, it hurt him. Almost killed him, I think. There’s no way we could ever really bond, but that doesn’t take away what we are.”

“No,” Remus murmurs. “It doesn’t.”

Harry doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t and he never has, but it’s been half a decade of silence and now that he’s started he can’t stop. “I’ve always thought that I’d have to be the one to kill him. I worried that me dying wouldn’t be enough because he’s so numb to love. I figured I would kill him and wait to go along, but after staying with him, after seeing how our connection affects him… It seems like we have two choices, yeah? Voldemort and I reunite and carry on like every other soulmate pair, _ somehow _, or one of us dies—either because we manage to kill him and I follow or you kill me and I take him down with me.”

Narcissa says what no one else wants to: “We can’t win this war and save you.”

It is a heavy truth.

“There’s always a third choice,” Remus says, and Harry is almost surprised at the steel in his voice. “_Always, _and we will find it. No one is going to kill you and we certainly won’t send you running back into his arms. There is a solution.”

“Well, what is it?” Draco demands.

Remus’ mouth sets in a grim line. “I don’t know,” he admits, “but we’ll find it. We always have.”

“We’re not killing you,” Sirius says bluntly. “We’ll figure something else out. Grindelwald was never killed, was he? He’s been locked up for half his life. Azkaban has plenty of open beds.”

“You broke out of Azkaban,” Draco points out unhelpfully. Sirius looks like he’s contemplating the most effective method of wringing his neck, just for a moment.

“As far as we’re aware Grindelwald never found his soulmate,” Harry says, because he’s thought about that too. “Remember that I’ve had five years to sit on this and I haven’t found a loophole yet.”

“No offense, Potter,” Draco says, “but no one’s ever praised you for your impeccable problem-solving.”

Harry actually does smile at this, impossibly.

They send out owls before they tell the Order—one to Dumbledore and one to Hogwarts, addressed to Snape with instructions to pass the message along to Ron and Hermione. They write them out and Sirius apparates to the Burrow to utilize their surplus of owls, informing Harry that Hedwig has been being cared for there. He feels a bit guilty that he never thought to ask before then, but Sirius promises to send her with one of the letters so Harry can see her when she returns.

“Send her to find Dumbledore,” he says hastily. “Errol isn’t smart enough.” Remus snorts into his mug of tea. 

They’re all blindly hoping that they’ll be able to reach Dumbledore.

“I’m going to tell Molly and Arthur while I’m there if that’s okay with you, Harry.”

“Sure,” he agrees, ignoring his turning stomach. It has to happen this way, he knows that. Still, the thought of other people talking about it makes Harry squirmy. He feels raw and exposed and unguarded in a way he’s not used to being.

“Then I’ll be back,” Sirius nods, and in a few moments they hear the flare of the Floo as he’s swept away.

Harry doesn’t speak to Sirius again until that night. He’s hit with a heavy feeling of deja vu as he creeps out of bed after Draco’s fallen asleep, pulling on his slippers and robe and tip-toeing down the stairs. Just as he found him his first night at Grimmauld Place, Harry comes upon Sirius in the first-floor drawing room with a glass of firewhiskey. Harry conjures a second glass as he sits down and Sirius smiles wryly at him before filling it wordlessly.

“What are you thinking about?” Harry asks, twisting the glass in his hands before taking a drink. The stuff is less bitter every time he tries it, he swears. The fire is blazing in the hearth, casting funny shadows up and down the walls and lighting the planes of Sirius’ face. 

“You,” Sirius says simply.

“You can hardly be blamed,” Harry allows. “I’m quite the puzzle.”

Sirius smirks dryly, tilting his head toward his godson. “That you are, Harry.”

“So what is it you’re stuck on?” Harry asks.

“How loved you are,” he answers simply, taking Harry by surprise. He goes on, “Today I told Arthur and Molly that Voldemort is your soulmate and they hardly blinked. They hardly spared five minutes for shock before they’d moved on to figuring out what we were going to do to save you. Neither wasted even half a second asking the question of whether or not we _ could _save you, because of course we can. We always have and we always will, and that’s just the way we’ve decided it to be. It’s remarkable.”

Harry doesn’t know what the proper response is, so he says nothing.

“Not everyone is like you,” Sirius continues. “I wonder if you even realize it, sometimes. The world just… turns out its pockets for you. Even when you ask it not to. And you _ deserve _it. You’re precious, Harry.”

Finally, after it becomes clear that Sirius won’t be continuing until Harry does, he says awkwardly, “I’m not all that.”

“Of course not,” Sirius agrees easily, smiling into his firewhiskey. “‘Just Harry.’”

“They weren’t… disgusted with me?” Harry hedges, changing the subject. He’s never been extraordinarily comfortable as the subject of conversation.

Sirius sets his glass down like he’s shocked at the notion, shaking his head. “Harry, how could they be? _ None _of us can be. This was your soul’s choice, not yours, and souls… Souls don’t choose wrong.”

“You can say that? That this isn’t wrong?” Harry flinches at the desperate edge to his voice and tosses back the last of his firewhiskey to cover it, refilling the glass with magic. Sirius doesn’t comment.

“I don’t pretend to understand fate,” he says instead, “but I have known her my entire life. She doesn’t make mistakes.”

“She could have fooled me,” Harry mutters. Sirius smiles and raises his arm in an offer. When Harry nods he lets it drop around the boy’s shoulders, tugging him into his side.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees vaguely, dropping his head to Sirius’ shoulder, accepting the rare touch. “Yeah. We’ll figure it out.”

“We always do,” his godfather says, squeezing his shoulder. Then he announces, “Finish your glass, then I’m getting you a butterbeer.” Harry laughs and very suddenly, all at once like a rush of breath after months and years of holding it in, he isn’t so afraid.

———

Harry and Draco spend most of their time in the library alone, so he’s surprised when he finds Remus rather than Draco thumbing through pages and running his fingers across the spines. Remus explains that he’s looking for any information on soulmates that might be hidden in the old Black library, infamous for its often less than moral material, so Harry sits down to watch him. 

There’s been something pressing on his mind since that first conversation they had in the kitchen, and he asks only because he knows his time left for asking things is finite.

“What was it like for you,” he broaches, “when Sirius went to Azkaban?”

Remus stiffens noticeably but composes himself after only a short pause, placing the book he was flipping through carefully back in its place and turning toward Harry. “It was…” His face twists with something. “It was the most agonizing twelve years I’ll ever have lived through.”

Harry almost doesn’t want to push any further—it seems too cruel a bruise to poke at—but does anyway. “You believed he did it?”

Remus’ frown is a small, regretful thing. He takes the time to pull three books from his current shelf before crossing the room to sit across from Harry, setting them on the table beside him. “Yes,” he admits. “Yeah, I did. That was the worst part, thinking he betrayed us—and I’ll be the first to tell you that there were many bad parts. I felt his pain there, you know. I felt the torture, however distilled, for twelve years.”

“But you…” Harry clears his throat. “But you lived without him.”

“Well,” Remus smiles bitterly, “_lived _is a generous term.”

“You didn’t lose your mind,” Harry clarifies.

“Oh, I held onto it,” Remus says. Then adds, “Only just.”

“Could you have done it forever?”

Remus shakes his head. “Oh, if I had lasted another year without him it would have been nothing short of a miracle. I only lasted so long, I’d wager, because my wolf took the brunt of it all. Not all werewolves were like me. Some—packs like Greyback’s, for example—live just as wolves do. My wolf was sick; it began dying the moment Sirius left and has never recovered.” Harry watches Remus turn over his thoughts and waits as patiently as he can manage. All of this is new information to him. “I thought a lot about suicide,” he admits finally. Shamefully. “Not for me, exactly—but for him. I thought a lot about putting him out of his misery.”

“That’s…” Harry’s mouth goes dry. “That’s a lot of power to hold.”

Remus smiles bitterly. “Too much for one man, I think.”

“But- you didn’t.”

“I did not,” he agrees.

“Why?”

He pauses contemplatively. “You have to understand how much I hated him. I hated him for betraying us; I hated him for leaving me; I hated him for the pain he put me through every day—and part of me wanted to punish him for that. Part of me revelled in knowing that he was paying for what he did.” Remus looks deeply pained, like just saying the words is gutting him.

He shouldn’t make him speak anymore, Harry knows. He asks anyway. “And the other half?”

“The other half-” Remus says on an exhale, “-the other half was waiting for him to come back to me.”

A pause. “He was given a life-sentence,” Harry says.

“Didn’t matter,” Remus says softly. “Nothing did.”

“And I did.” Both Harry and Remus start at the voice. Sirius is standing in the doorway when Harry turns in his seat. “Eventually.” His gaze moves to Remus’ and the way they look at each other then makes Harry feel like he shouldn’t be watching. It’s too tender, too full of something that Harry can’t name. “For him,” Sirius says, speaking to Harry but not looking away from Remus. His soulmate.

Harry will admit he envies them. The part of him that knows this is what he should have been given burns and burns in his chest. He thinks of Voldemort and longs for the tenderness that he will never, ever have with him. 

He aches for what has been stolen from him; somehow he aches for what has been stolen from Voldemort even more so.

“I don’t understand,” Harry says honestly, maybe breaking the moment. “Not to say that it was simple or easy, but you two were separated for twelve years and more or less… fine. It wasn’t anything like what’s happening to Voldemort and I, and it’s only been a few months.”

Remus nods grimly. “I noticed that as well.”

Sirius comes to sit beside Remus on the couch across from Harry, speaking as he crosses the room. “It could be any number of things, really. The fact that your bond is only half complete, possibly, or the fact that your blood is a critical part of what created him. The scar and your connection to each other… there truly is no shortage of possibilities.”

“All of those are permanent.”

“This is probably true,” Remus agrees, because no one lies to Harry anymore.

Sirius makes a dismissive sound and swats the air like he can brush away the truth of it. “As if you’ve ever given a damn about rules. You’ve found a way to be the exception to every one so far, haven’t you?”

“This is definitely true,” Remus nods. He grabs a book and tosses it at Harry, who catches it with a bit of a grunt.

“Hefty.”

Remus doesn’t respond, passing the second book on to Sirius and keeping the last for himself. “Get reading,” he says when the two look at him dumbly, and belatedly they do. Draco appears an hour later, takes one look at the three of them, disappears amidst the shelves and returns with four more books in hand. He drops them on the table with a heavy thud and collapses next to Harry, flips open a small, green, leatherbound book with the words, _ Soulmates, Fate, and Other Toils _printed on the cover, and begins to read along with them.

———

Dumbledore arrives with no warning, Hedwig in tow, just two days after they’d sent her out in search of him. He doesn’t waste time speaking with the adults when he arrives, but seeks out Harry immediately. They make their way into the same room Harry first spoke to Dumbledore in, sitting down. Harry hates the pitying look from the wizard, hates how it makes him itch in his skin.

“You have to kill me,” Harry says bluntly. “It’s the only way, isn’t it? We’re at an impasse.”

Harry knows—has always known, maybe—that Dumbledore could not be counted on to save him, but only recently has he really begun to understand what that means. In a way, it’s somewhat relieving. Here is someone who Harry knows will do what’s right; there is no amount of love for Harry that could dissuade him from the cause.

But the universe has supplied Harry with no shortage of surprises.

“Oh,” Dumbledore sighs, propping his elbows up on the desk and steepling his fingers before him, “I should think not. I certainly don’t plan on killing you, and neither, I suspect, does anyone else.”

“Sir,” Harry objects, “he and I both will unravel if we continue on like this, and I can’t _ hurt _him. I can’t be the chosen one anymore. Not ever.”

Instead of offering up a solution Dumbledore asks a question. This isn’t entirely unusual for him, which in no way eases Harry’s impatience. “Have you ever wondered over my soulmate, Harry?”

This question, however, takes Harry aback. “I always figured you’d never found yours,” he says finally. “How else could you be alone and still alive?”

Dumbledore makes them sit in silence for so long that when he speaks it almost takes Harry by surprise. “Know that what I am about to tell you is known to no one but me, and the soulmate in question.”

Harry nods slowly, breath caught somewhere in his chest. This was entirely unexpected. “Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore’s eyes stray past Harry, somewhere miles away from where they sit. “You know of Grindelwald, Harry?”

“Of course,” Harry says, but it comes out more of a breath. _ Grindelwald? _

“Grindelwald and I were friends, once, when we were very young. At the time, I thought that we shared the same ideals, that we wanted to change the world in the same way. I believed—as he did—that we would revolutionize together. 

“But one must be careful with dreams so large as those. It does not take much for them to spiral into something darker, something much more sinister. Grindelwald and I lost contact for a long while, and by the time we spoke again he was too far gone to save.”

When Dumbledore doesn’t continue Harry asks the obvious. “Grindelwald was your soulmate?”

“He is,” Dumbledore affirms, “and now it has been decades since I last saw him, that he’s been imprisoned. You know how Grindelwald’s reign ended, I presume?”

“You defeated him.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore hummed, and Harry tries fruitlessly to decipher the far-off look in his eyes. “Yes, I defeated him, but I did not kill him. That was, as you know well, because I didn’t carry a deathwish at the time. Other wizards, the wizarding world as a whole, perhaps, called what I did mercy. Some criticized it, claiming that a man like Grindelwald deserved death; some praised it, claiming that a man like Grindelwald deserved _ worse _ than death. Some called me a fool, but _ all _called me merciful, for better or for worse.

“I have not seen Grindelwald since that duel roughly fifty years ago. Since then he has all but rotted in Nurmengard and slipped past insanity—an insanity too far to pull a man back from, I daresay. I have not gone to him because I don’t believe I could continue to live with what I saw; I don’t believe I could continue to live with what I have done.

“There is a reason, Harry, that I imprisoned Grindelwald rather than killing him.” Dumbledore’s eyes sharpen on Harry with a clarity they didn’t hold before, but they’re solemn. Grave. Harry can’t find the strength to turn away from him. “It was not mercy.”

It’s a long time before Dumbledore speaks again, and by now the ice feels too thin for Harry to risk breaking. There are so many things he could ask Dumbledore, so many things he wishes he could put into words. He wants to ask how Dumbledore has lived without Grindelwald when Harry and Voldemort seem so horribly dependent on the other. He wants to ask Dumbledore whether he ever regretted it, ever missed Grindelwald, ever woke up itching for him. He wants to ask what in Godric’s name he could possibly _ do, _but Dumbledore speaks first.

“Whoever Voldemort is, Harry, whoever he has become, he was once Tom Riddle. Just as Grindelwald was once Gellert, the boy who lived in the house beside mine and had dreams to change the world. I have made many mistakes, Harry, but the one I regret most is not choosing to save him.”

This doesn’t answer a single one of Harry’s questions but seems to render them all useless. “You believe you could have? Saved him, I mean?”

Dumbledore smiles then, a sad, nearly haunted thing. It’s an expression Harry has never seen on his worn face. “Oh, certainly. If I had tried. If I hadn’t been so unforgiving. If I had gone to him. But that is quite enough about me, I believe; there are no answers to be found in mine and Grindelwald’s story, only fruitless questions. To you, Harry, I have to ask: Do you believe Voldemort can be saved?”

“You’re asking if I can save him?” Harry says, unable to help the indignance that encroaches his tone. “All my life you’ve been telling me I have to kill him.”

“True,” Dumbledore agrees, unmoved. “However, there are new factors to be considered now.”

Harry’s indignance ebbs as quickly as it came. There’s no use for it now. For all he has tried to resent Dumbledore, he has never once succeeded, not truly. Despite the manipulation, despite the fact that he is even now being manipulated—and he is not naive to that fact—he cannot hate him. So he is wary rather than angry when he asks, “You truly believe it’s possible?”

“I believe,” Dumbledore says, and he is once again somewhere unreachable, somewhere out of Harry’s grasp, “that you wear his words on your wrist for a reason.”

Then they’re quiet.

“He’s incapable of love,” Harry whispers.

“Oh, Harry,” and Dumbledore smiles at him with some awful combination of pity and kindness. “You will be so very surprised at the power you have over him.”

“He’s going to burn me alive,” says Harry.

Dumbledore says, “So rise from the ashes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you miss Voldy? So do I /: ... but fear not! The next time my name shows up in your inbox he'll be there too (':
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


	21. Virtue Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we finally made it, kids. oh boy. with a long chapter too.
> 
> four days ago marked one year since i posted the first chapter of this fic. 100,000 words and 365 days later, and we're about two thirds of the way through. that isn't at all what i planned for, by the way. but all the same, i feel so blessed to be able to share my writing with you all and so blessed that anyone cares enough to read it, no matter the word count. i'm so thankful for each and every one of you, seriously. it's been a crazy god damned year for everyone, and i'm so lucky to have spent it doing this.
> 
> i'll stop gushing now, i swear. but thanks for being here anyway.
> 
> as always, be safe, be kind, and take care of each other. and much love from me (:

Telling his family that he promised Voldemort he would leave them is somehow, impossibly, even harder than telling them he’s his soulmate. He didn’t choose to be Voldemort’s soulmate, after all, but he’s choosing to leave them. Whatever his reasons may be, however justified Harry might find them, he’s still leaving. 

What he decides to do is gather them together and rip it off like a band-aid. They’re understandably apprehensive at the impromptu meeting in the kitchen, but sit there dutifully all the same.

“Here’s the thing,” Harry begins haltingly. Sirius drops his head into one hand, rubbing his temples preemptively. “I have one last piece of news to break.”

“What could it possibly be?”

Harry smiles nervously. “Well, you know- you know how I said he’d do anything I asked right? And he did, right? I told him not to kill Dudley or hurt anyone else so he didn’t.”

“Yes,” Draco drawls, “we’ve covered the boy-miracle stuff already.”

Harry glares at him half-heartedly and plows onward. “But you know what I said, about how he’d do anything if it meant me going back to him?”

Remus’ eyes widen. “Harry,” he cautions

“Listen,” Harry continues hastily, “I bought time. We’ll figure out some sort of plan before I leave.”

“Before you _ leave?_” Sirius shouts, standing up. Everyone in the room flinches. “You aren’t _ leaving._”

“Yes, I am,” Harry argues. “Of course I am. No one will live through the tantrum he’ll throw if I don’t.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have thrown around a promise like that in the first place!”

“I don’t exactly have many chips to gamble,” he snaps. A vase on the mantelpiece cracks and no one acknowledges it. “I used what was available to me at the time.”

“You should have told someone,” Sirius seethes. “We would have found an alternative.”

“I’m telling you _ now! _And you can bet your arse that’s more than I would have done a year ago!”

Draco tips his glass, remarkably calm in the midst of their shouting. “A very fair point.”

“You,” Sirius seethes, turning to Draco, “shut up.” The boy rolls his eyes but raises his hands above his head in mock surrender. Sirius turns back to address Harry. “I haven’t the slightest idea how you’ve lived this long.”

“Dumb luck, probably,” Harry admits. He’s trying to get a reign on his magic, to pull it in before it spills over. Now is not the time to blow up.

“Destiny,” Draco drawls sarcastically. The unbothered facade almost fools Harry, but he knows Draco too well to look past it now. He almost wishes he could.

“Harry is right,” Remus interrupts them, quieting Sirius with a look. “He’s made a promise and he has to go back. Our energy needs to be spent now on figuring out what in Merlin’s name he’ll do when he gets there.”

Sirius whirls to look at Remus accusingly and, as if on queue, there’s a tapping at the window and they turn to see an owl waiting impatiently. Errol, the Weasley’s owl. Draco is the first to the window, offering up his arm to the scrappy owl and bringing him inside before retrieving the note from his ankle, dodging his nipping fingers with a scathing look directed toward the bird. 

“Hermione,” he says shortly, scanning the note. “She wants us to firecall her in an hour.”

“Brilliant,” Harry says, and means it. “She’ll have all sorts of ideas.”

“I’m sure,” Draco says distastefully. Harry shoots him a look.

“I suppose it’s as good as anything,” Sirius relents as the tension in the room eases, although still obviously irritated at being opposed by his own soulmate.

“_Brilliant,_” Harry repeats.

An hour later Hermione’s face appears in the embers before them, searing hot. She looks distressed, and Harry can’t blame her. He can’t imagine what that owl would have been like to receive.

“Hermione,” Sirius greets, “what is it?”

“I’ve done some thinking,” Hermione says rushedly, voice wrought with nerves. It’s anything but an encouraging opener, and Harry braces himself for whatever she’s thought up. “I have an idea. It’s… risky, and I don’t think anyone is going to like it.”

“I don’t think there’s any solution we’ll _ like,_” Sirius says. “Let’s hear it.”

She gnaws on her lip. “I’ve done a lot of reading up on soulmates since first-year. They’re _ fascinating, _ you know, so I believe I’m caught up to anyone raised as a wizard at least in the context of raw knowledge. I can’t _ understand _it as the rest of you do, growing up around adults with soulmates and being raised on the fairytales, and neither can Harry, but I’ve been over it with Ron about a hundred times in the past few days and he says everything checks out, but he doesn’t like it either.”

“Hermione,” Harry pushes, “get on with it.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry.” Her face twists. “If we’re not going to kill you—and we’re _ not _going to kill you—we’ll have to find another way to neutralize him. We could trap him or trick him, imprison him like Grindelwald, but no option of that sort would be any better for you than death.”

“_Hermione,_” Sirius echoes Harry.

“Alright!” she snaps. “I’m sorry! Harry, to both win the war and save you- there’s only one way we can do both.” Her face is suddenly wrecked, and Harry knows. He already knows what she’ll say. He already knows how this ends.

“I think you need to-” She clenches her eyes shut. “You have to bond with him.”

———

Two days later the students of Hogwarts are released for break. By midday Hermione and Ron have appeared at the steps of Grimmauld Place with their luggage. This time Harry pulls Hermione into his chest and the huff of hot breath against his neck doesn’t feel like bugs crawling across his skin. It feels… nice. Comforting. It feels like Hermione.

“Harry,” she breathes before stepping back. “It’s so good to see you.” Her smile is genuine if a bit sad. 

Then Ron is pushing her out of the way to envelop Harry in a crushing hug. The affection is unexpected if not unwanted, although Harry can’t help but note that Ron seems to have sprouted up at least a few inches since the last time Harry saw him. “It’s been too long, mate.”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees a bit breathlessly, putting some space between them and patting Ron’s shoulder in a way he hopes isn’t awkward. “Yeah it has.”

“Ginny’s staying at the Burrow, Dad didn’t want her too near all this. She’s furious, ‘course.”

“Of course,” Harry agrees with a grin.

“But she’ll come down to see you before we leave,” Ron assures him. Harry thinks, _ You mean before I leave, _but doesn’t say it.

“Into the kitchen then,” Sirius hollars from somewhere further in the depths of Grimmauld Place. “We’ll find a bite to eat.”

There’s a notable amount of malicious staring between Ron and Draco when they both enter the room, but Harry drags the latter down to sit next to him with a pleading look and he complies. “Play nice,” he warns, and Draco nods stiffly.

“Fine,” he sniffs.

“Malfoy,” Ron acknowledges.

“Weasley,” he returns.

“Good,” Hermione says, pleased. “We’re all friendly, then?”

“We’d better be,” Sirius announces, entering the kitchen with a grin. “Any fighting and I’m confiscating the biscuits.” With a flourish a platter appears on the center of the table.

“Thanks,” Harry grins, jostling with Ron to reach the center of the table. It feels familiar and warm, like being thirteen in the Great Hall again and wrestling for the warm plate of rolls. Hermione is huffing at them good naturedly and Draco is rolling his eyes and Sirius is laughing at them and Harry is wondering how in the world he’s supposed to leave this place that has only just now started to feel like home.

They don’t even waste a night sleeping before they call an Order meeting. Dumbledore is absent but Kingsley assures them all he’s not gone far. It’s the same Order Harry’s been seeing since he arrived at Grimmauld place: Kingsley and Moody, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Remus and Sirius, and Tonks all gathered in the kitchen along with Harry and Draco. Snape showed up last but Harry has hardly looked at the man since his arrival. His addition as well as the additions of Ron and Hermione leave the space feeling more cramped and charged than any of them are used to. 

“It’s not going to work,” Moody growls out the moment Hermione speaks her piece. “You can’t trick the Dark Lord into bonding with you with ulterior motives. The moment he knows your intentions he’ll rain hell down.”

“Occlumency?” Tonks offers.

“There’s no keeping secrets from soulmates,” Remus says, glancing at Sirius. “It would never work.”

“Plus Harry is pretty rubbish at it,” Ron chimes in, looking at Harry apologetically. “Sorry mate.”

“So I can’t be honest and I can’t lie,” Harry summarizes, “but I can’t stay here and we can’t trick him.”

Mr. Weasley presses his mouth flat. “Sounds right, yes.”

Hermione looks like she’s never thought harder in her life, and Harry witnessed her study for OWLs. “They _ have _ to bond,” she mutters fiercely. Then, “Harry can only tell the truth that he has.” Everyone’s eyes turn towards her and Harry watches the dawning epiphany on her face. “Oh. Oh, _ oh Merlin._”

“What, Hermione?” Harry pushes, slightly crazed. This doesn’t bode well.

“Snape,” she says, eyes glazed and off-focus, “how skilled are you at modifying memory?”

“Excuse me?” Harry interjects.

Snape answers as if Harry were inaudible. “Incredibly.”

“Harry doesn’t have to lie,” she whispers. “Oh,_ hell._”

Hermione never curses.

“Now that…” Moody responds thoughtfully, “that’s a better plan.”

“That’s-” Sirius splutters. “That’s insane! You’re not all actually considering this.” Harry still hasn’t caught entirely on to what they’re suggesting, but he tries to keep up. Sirius’ reaction is a generally reliable indicator of whether or not Harry will like it.

“Well,” Tonks offers hesitantly, “it solves everything, doesn’t it? We modify Harry’s memories so that he remembers leaving on purpose, maybe sneaking away without telling any of us.”

“But Harry would never do that,” Mrs. Weasley points out rather fiercely. “Voldemort wouldn’t buy it.”

“So we’ll make up a scenario in which he was _ forced _to leave,” Kingsley murmurs. “Now what would that be?”

Hermione’s eyes are shut. “We planned to kill him,” she says quietly, and the entire room falls silent. “We planned to kill him and he found out. He went back to Voldemort because he knew he was the only person who could keep him safe.”

“Voldemort knows that he would never leave us,” Sirius says adamantly.

“So make it a conspiracy,” she says, finally opening her eyes. “You or Remus goes to Harry in the middle of the night and tells him that you think Dumbledore’s influence is more powerful than they are. Tell Harry that his only choice is to go back, but he has to try. He has to try to save Voldemort or he’ll never be able to see any of us again.”

“_Dumbledore?_” Mrs. Weasley exclaims. “He would never-”

“He would,” Harry interrupts her shortly. She looks at him in astonishment.

To his surprise it’s Snape who agrees. “If he believed there was no other choice, he would.”

“So,” Harry says slowly, “I go back to Voldemort seeing him as my only salvation, while also believing that if I can bring him back to sanity you lot will quit wanting to kill me.” He looks at Hermione, who nods anxiously. He shrugs. “Well, it’s sort of brilliant.”

Sirius splutters. Hermione beams.

“We won’t be suggesting that all of us are in agreement,” she adds hastily, “which will make it much more believable. He would never believe that Sirius or Ron and I or Molly would _ ever _be okay with it, but us giving you up to save you…”

Harry nods. It’s well within the realm of possibility.

“You’re okay with this?” Sirius asks, only to Harry.

Harry smiles at him and he knows there’s no concealing the sadness there. “Do I have another choice?” 

And no one speaks because they all know the answer.

Dumbledore is of course filled in the moment they’re able to reach him, and he comes to Grimmauld Place to talk to Harry the day after their decision is made.

“I cannot say this clearly enough, Harry—two opposing forces cannot touch. No matter if the dark loves the light or the light loves the dark; one must always overcome the other. You have been tied to Voldemort irreversibly, and you now choose between staying the same and allowing yourselves to destroy one another, or changing him and learning how to live with that.”

Dumbledore is sitting across from Harry at the desk once more—their routine meeting place now, it seems.

“I can’t change Voldemort, sir,” Harry says, frustration leaking through his voice. Despite anything he’s said before, despite his and Dumbledore’s heart-to-heart regarding Grindelwald, Harry is sure of it. “There is no changing him.”

“The soul is capable of wondrous things, Harry, whether we acknowledge it as love or not.”

“You think it can grant miracles?”

“I think it already is one.”

Harry scrubs a hand down his face. “I’m not strong enough for this.”

“With your power and his, you are strong enough for anything.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

Dumbledore’s answering silence is enough to tell Harry all he needs to know. It speaks loudly: _It has to. _

“He looked different when I saw him,” Harry changes the subject, unwilling to dwell, “closer to human than he used to be. It’s like he’s soaking me up, all the light in me, and I’m soaking up all his darkness.”

Dumbledore looks contemplative. “In muggle science, which you must be at least vaguely familiar with, they make a very clear point of saying that heat transfers to cooler objects, not the reverse. When you place your hand against a warm plate the warmth of the plate heats your hand. Similarly, when you hold an ice cube in your palm and it melts, that is the heat of your hand warming the ice cube. Nature strives for balance, always. 

“Your magic and Voldemort’s are struggling to find their balance, the middle-ground between your light and his dark. Unfortunately, in this instance your light is the heat. You’re drained because they are trying to get back on even ground. Are you following?”

“I think so, sir.”

“When you’ve both steadied you can find something else to draw light from, you can nurture it in yourself, you can attempt to rekindle Voldemort’s; all of these things can bring you closer to the light you’ve lost, but now…” He smiles pityingly. “For now you will have to make sacrifices.”

“You’re saying I’ll go dark before I can come back?”

“Not fully,” Dumbledore corrects, “more grey than dark magic, really, but you have only ever known light. You know what the pull of dark magic has done to wizards, Harry. You know the temptation it brings, am I correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“For a wizard like you, someone who has never tasted it before, it will be alluring. But you’re a strong wizard, and above all else you’re a good one. It’s only temporary.”

“Only temporary,” Harry repeats.

Dumbledore nods and hums. “Know that there are not many wizards I would put my faith in this way. This is the path we’ve chosen because I trust that you, and _ only _you, are capable of it.” Harry doesn’t know how Dumbledore so gracefully manages to make the statement both a compliment and a threat, but he acknowledges it as both. Dumbledore and Harry are not lying to each other now, and the truth is more bitter than he ever expected it to taste.

“I expect you’ll still want to say your goodbyes,” Dumbledore says before standing. “Time is so often shorter than we imagine it to be. I’ll be back in a few days to say my own farewells before you go.”

Dumbledore braces his hand on his chair’s headrest and Harry eyes the blackened flesh. He thinks, _ How short is time, really? _

“I’ll see you then,” Harry agrees vaguely, and watches the charcoal tips of Dumbledore’s fingers all the way out of the room.

————

It’s Harry who suggests the going away party. 

It doesn’t feel right to disappear again, not given the time and opportunity to give a proper goodbye. Formally, they call it Easter supper.

Ginny, Luna, and Neville are all brought to Grimmauld Place from their respective residences. Fred and George, who Harry hasn’t seen since his return to Grimmauld Place, come from their flat in Diagon Alley for the celebrations as well. Harry requested Tonks and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, but none of the rest of the order. “A night for family,” Harry told Remus when he presented the idea.

“I don’t have to be there,” Draco told Harry later that day. “I won’t be a twat about it if you don’t want me to come.”

“You’re being a twat to suggest otherwise,” Harry told him. “Your mum is coming, too.” And that was that. 

That night, Harry feels like he’s been sent back in time. Gathered in the sitting room with all of the people he loves, he can almost pretend the last year never happened. Fred and George helpfully offer free pickings of any of their products in the case that Harry is in the mood for slipping Voldemort a Fainting Fancy. Luna comments on Harry’s aura. Neville brings his caroling flowers to answer Harry’s inquiry about what they sang (Harry is treated to a few rounds of _ My Baby Gave Me a Hippogriff for Christmas _before locking them in the upstairs drawing room hastily, nevermind that it’s Easter.) Harry is happy to discuss Ginny’s captaincy with her, talking through their newest plays and each player’s strengths and weaknesses. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley look the most relaxed Harry has seen them since December, if he’s seen them relaxed at all. It could almost pass as normal, if Harry tried. 

But tonight no one is dodging the topic. No one is pretending this is anything but a goodbye, and he’s thankful for that.

“Butterbeer for the kids,” Sirius announces, entering the room with seven pint glasses bobbing in along in the air behind him. “And firewhiskey for the adults,” he adds with a grin.

“May I give a toast?” Luna asks sweetly, plucking her glass from the air with a polite nod directed to the empty space beside the glass. Who she’s thanking Harry can’t even begin to guess. Sirius waves his hand in a _ go ahead _gesture and Luna stands, smoothing out her ruffled dress and smiling at the room. “To Harry Potter,” she announces, turning her soft smile to Harry only. “The boy we love.”

“To Harry Potter,” the room echoes, and Harry thinks as he drinks that for once he doesn’t mind being the one toasted.

After that the nights passes in a blur of laughter and drink. At some point Remus conjures up an old radio and tunes into some magical music station and Remus and Sirius begin to dance. Draco snatches the bottle of firewhiskey where it’s left unguarded and downs a fifth of it, passing the bottle to Harry wordlessly before standing and offering him a hand.

“A dance?”

Harry blinks a few times before silently taking his hand. They move to the center of the room, arranging themselves as if to waltz. They sway more slowly than the music demands but no one seems to care, and the room is so full of laughter and conversation and music that no one except Harry hears Draco when he speaks.

“I just can’t believe that after everything-” he stops, his hand tightening where it holds Harry’s, “-after everything you’re still going back there.”

“I got you out didn’t I? And your mum. You won’t be alone.” Harry’s voice is weaker than he means it to be. And sadder. “It wasn’t worthless.”

Draco drops his head to Harry’s chest, not stopping their dance. “God damn you, Potter,” he laughs weakly. “I don’t want you to leave. Can you bloody believe that?”

“Not really,” he admits. Harry backs into Neville and stumbles a bit before steadying himself. Then, “I’m not too happy to be leaving you either.”

“You _ idiot,_” Draco responds, but it lacks heat. “You bloody incompetent, reckless bugger. You’re such an awful person to care about.”

Belatedly he drops his cheek to rest atop Draco’s head and the other boy doesn’t object. How bizarre to be here. How absolutely incomprehensible this would have been to Harry less than a year ago.

“I’ll come back,” Harry promises. “I’m not forgetting you. Any of you.” Then he adds, “Especially not you.”

“Why especially?”

“Because you were there with me in the beginning,” Harry says, “and you’ll be there again with me this time, just a bit differently. You really think I’ll be able to survive in that bloody manor without your voice constantly ringing in my head?”

Draco laughs and Harry graciously pretends not to notice the wetness in it. “What about me, then? How am I supposed to survive in this dusty old shack?”

“Well that’s easy,” Harry says, voice dropping to something softer. “You just can’t forget me either.”

“As if anyone would let me if I tried,” Draco huffs, and he surely isn’t crying. If anyone asked, neither boy would say any differently.

There’s a tap on Harry’s shoulder and he turns to see Mrs. Weasley. “Can I bother you for a dance, Harry dear?”

Draco steps back graciously after Harry’s nod and Mrs.Weasley steps into his place, Harry taking the lead. The Yule Ball fourth year had been good for something, at least.

“No tears tonight,” Mrs. Weasley tells Harry, leaning in slightly like they’re discussing a great scandal. “No one’s dead and no one’s dying; this is a celebration.”

“Of what?”

“Of family,” she responds like it’s obvious, “and of you. That we haven’t lost you yet and don’t plan to anytime soon.”

“You’re too good to me,” Harry says, smiling. “No tears,” he agrees.

“And I’m tired of this waltzing business,” she says a tad huffily, pulling her hand from Harry’s to dig in her robes. She pulls out her wand and flicks it in the general direction of the radio until she’s satisfied with what she’s found. It’s nothing Harry recognizes, but upbeat and cheerful. “Now,” she says, seemingly satisfied, “let’s dance.”

And the night dissolves. Mrs. Weasley drags her husband into the center of the room and Luna follows with Ron and Neville, both surprisingly complacent. Hermione joins, and when Fred and George jump in there’s no coming back. Suddenly the sitting room of Grimmauld Place has been transformed into a dance floor and Harry has been tugged into the throng, being transferred between hands and hugs and conversations, and never once does he feel himself suffocating. Maybe it’s the firewhiskey that finally loosens him up enough to join their ministrations, or maybe it’s the knowledge that tonight will be the last for a long time that things will ever feel this simple, but one way or another Harry falls into it all.

So maybe this is home, Harry thinks, listening to Luna sing along to each and every song, watching George spin Hermione in circles until she sways, catching Ron in the act of staring, big and doe-eyed, and maybe it isn’t. Perhaps it feels foreign at times, and perhaps he’s outgrown the things that used to fit him, perhaps he’s squeezing himself into tight spaces to feign belonging now and again, but there is always this. 

Maybe home, Harry thinks, can also be red eyes. Perhaps he is allowed to have both. If he is willing to try, and if the world is willing to give him this.

———

His going away celebrations felt shorter than he thought they would and the day of comes sooner than Harry expects it to. For something that plagues his every waking thought, it did a mighty job of still managing to sneak up on him.

Whatever goodbyes Harry didn’t manage at the party he squeezes into the day between then and his leaving. Dumbledore appears, as promised, the morning of. He leads Harry into the sitting room rather than the office this time, presenting him with a cup of tea that Harry takes a bit puzzledly. This feels different than any of his meetings before with Dumbledore and he can’t quite pin down the reason.

Dumbledore makes him wait.

“How are you feeling?”

Harry decides to play along for the moment, blowing on his tea as he mulls over an answer. “I’m feeling okay,” he answers honestly. “Less panicked than I expected to be, truly. I think I just… want it to be over with. I want it to be done.”

“You want to be back with Voldemort?” 

“The sooner I leave the sooner I come back, right?” Harry says, smiling with a bit of unsureness. “Being here isn’t doing me any good anymore. Or anyone, I suppose.”

“Yes, I think you’re correct in that.” They lapse into silence as Dumbledore sips at his tea and Harry tries not to be rude in his fidgeting as he waits. “Before this goes any further, Harry, there’s something you need to know. I couldn’t continue peacefully knowing that I’d sent you back without telling you.”

“What is it?” Harry asks slowly. _ What could possibly be left? _

“I told you when you asked about my arm that it was a conversation for another time.”

Harry nods. “Yes.”

“I’m afraid to explain the circumstances that led me here would take far too long and, at this point in time, not be worth the time spent on it. Time, now, is rather short, so I shall tell you nothing but this:

“In a bout of foolishness I meddled with a cursed object—a particularly dangerous curse. In the time since Severus has been supplying potions to slow the spread, but I’m afraid it’s too powerful a curse to fend off entirely.”

Dumbledore doesn’t seem inclined to go on. “It’s going to kill you?” Harry manages.

“Yes. It will indeed kill me.”

Harry sets his tea down on the table carefully, his mind falling into a numbness that he’s thankful for. This atop all else is far too much to feel in its entirety. “How long?”

“I suspect I will be very lucky to last through the year.”

Harry is nodding but can’t recall when he decided to. “I won’t see you again,” he says flatly.

“No,” Dumbledore agrees. “If all goes well, I suspect you will not.”

“Then this is it,” Harry says.

Dumbledore leans forward and Harry thinks distantly that his eyes are far too sharp for a dying man. “It’s very important that you remember all that I told you, but more importantly than that, and above all else, you must remember who you are.”

“The Chosen One?” Harry ventures a little bitterly.

Dumbledore shakes his head, “No,” he whispers urgently, “not a savior. Not a hero, either. Not what you are asked to be or what you are expected to be, but what you are. What you _ are _ is a good wizard and a good man, Harry. _ That’s _ what you mustn't lose sight of. I am deeply sorry for ever asking you to be more than that.”

Harry searches Dumbledore’s eyes for a few moments but doesn’t find an answer, so he asks instead. Because he wants to hear him say it. Because he wants the wizard to admit it. “If this weren’t an option, if things were different… Would you kill me?”

Dumbledore leans back in his seat, not bothering to hide the surprise on his face. He takes his time in answering, sipping on his tea once more. Harry utilizes all of his meager self-control not to push him. “If things were different, I do believe you would ask me to.”

“How do you know that?” Harry asks. It’s half demand, half plea. Even now Harry doesn’t know if what Dumbledore says is true. Even now he worries that everyone’s faith in him has been misplaced, that he’s not the person they think he is. Even now he is twelve years old, looking at Dumbledore to tell him he’s a worthy wizard. Even now he feels like a child.

Dumbledore looks at Harry with a sort of sadness that feels both familiar and unnameable. “It is the goodness in you that makes you remarkable, Harry. Not a scar and not bad fortune—goodness. Your capacity for love and selflessness despite the evil you’ve witnessed… _ that _is your power.” He nods. “You would have asked me. Don’t doubt that.”

“And you would have done it,” Harry says pointedly, because he wants him to say it. He wants him to admit it.

Dumbledore looks pained, but they are not lying to each other anymore. “Yes,” he agrees finally. “I would have.”

This is the difference between Dumbledore and Sirius, Harry thinks. Between Dumbledore and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Between Dumbledore and his family. To them his selflessness is self-destruction, and to Dumbledore it’s a worthy sacrifice. To Harry’s family he is something more important than a war, than a battle, than a Dark wizard. To Dumbledore, Harry has always _ been _the war. 

Harry wants to spit in Dumbledore’s face. He wants to cry. He wants to thank him. He fears that if he does any of the above his magic will cave all four walls down atop them, so instead he stands, exiting the room and leaving his mug of tea to go cold where he left it.

This, he thinks, is probably as good a goodbye as he ever could have asked for.

A few hours later Hermione, Ron, and Harry wait in the kitchen for Snape’s arrival. Dumbledore has gone, and Harry and Draco decided the night before that he didn’t want to be around to witness the memory alteration. Sirius and Remus are keeping him company with Narcissa, off somewhere trying not to think about what’s about to take place in their kitchen, surely. The closer the moment comes the more anxious and on edge the entire house seems to become.

“Let’s review once more,” Hermione says in the midst of her pacing.

“Hermione-” Ron tries to cut in but Harry grips his shoulder, shaking his head slightly. _ Best to let her get it out, _he tries to say with just a look. Ron settles down, so Harry assumes he reads the message fine.

“Harry, you’ll remember sending the patronus to Voldemort and everything you said to him, but not that you told us. You spent the last few weeks torn between staying here or returning to Voldemort, not knowing how you would return to him even if you could bring yourself to leave, and suddenly Dumbledore has done the job for you.” Hermione kicks the corner of the table on her way past and jumps about a foot in the air, then just as quickly shakes herself out of it and carries on as if nothing happened, reciting her monologue as if it were memorized. “You’re heartbroken, but relieved that you never had to tell us you were planning to leave anyway. You hate that this is the reason you ultimately left, but you know that it was going to happen eventually and it’s for the best.

“Voldemort will only see what you remember when he uses Legilimency on you. He’ll see Sirius and Remus tell you that you need to love him in order to save him, but that won’t be enough to raise suspicion. He’ll write it off as the Light side’s usual hopeful antics and focus on the fact that you’re back with him.”

“Right,” Harry encourages when her face twists a bit with uncertainty. She looks at him searchingly and he nods. “I know him better than any of you. He won’t get caught up on that bit.”

She bites her lips anxiously and nods before sitting down on the other side of Ron. Harry peers around him to see her still nodding, gazing at the table in concentration. He makes eye contact with Ron, who shakes his head slightly, looking bewildered.

“If you’re quite finished, Ms. Granger.”

The sound of Snape’s voice fills the room with a feeling of dread not unlike the feeling the Gryffindors endured every potions class. Harry doesn’t have time to turn before Snape has swept in front of them, sitting at the table across from the trio. 

“I am,” Hermione confirms at the same time Ron and Harry chorus, “She is.”

“Then we shall begin.”

Harry tries to tamp down the anxiety rising in his chest. He’s never liked letting Snape in his head, and it’s never gone well for them, after all. 

“Let’s get on with it then,” he says.

Snape nods and says nothing; under the table Hermione reaches across Ron to grasp Harry’s hand; Harry meets Snape’s eyes.

———

Harry wakes up with someone else’s palm over his mouth and their spare hand shaking his shoulder. His eyes shoot open, panic-stricken for only a few seconds before Remus’ face comes into focus, his warm eyes wide and warning. Harry barely struggles before he stills, watching as the hand braced on Harry’s shoulder leaves to make a _ hush _gesture, then points toward Draco’s sleeping form only a foot or two separated from Harry’s.

Harry nods slowly, trying to gain his bearings. Trying to figure out what could possibly be happening. Remus lets go of him, stepping back as Harry eases himself out of bed as gently as he can manage, eyeing Draco’s sleeping form. 

“Grab your clothes,” Remus orders. It’s spoken quietly, but the sense of urgency sets Harry’s magic crackling. 

“What’s happening?” he hisses, but Remus shakes his head quickly, eyes darting to Draco and back to Harry.

“Change quickly,” he says in answer. “Don’t wake Draco.”

When he leaves Harry has half a mind to wake his friend out of spite alone, but instead follows Remus’ directions dutifully. He has no reason not to trust Remus, after all. Whatever the reason for this, there’s no chance Harry will be in danger. Why Draco needs to be left out of it, he doesn’t know. He brushes it off and gets dressed.

Remus is waiting at the top of the stairwell for Harry, tapping his toes as Harry shuts the bedroom door with a quiet _ click _behind him. He gestures and Harry follows him down the stairs and into the sitting room wordlessly. Sirius stands from the loveseat as they enter, looking solemn. Remus shuts the door behind them and Harry looks between the two. “What the hell is going on?” 

“Maybe we should take him outside before we tell him anything,” Sirius says uncertainty, sniffing like he can smell Harry’s magic on the air.

“Outside?” he questions sharply. “Where are we going?”

“Outside,” Remus agrees, ignoring him. “We’ll have to cast a glamour on him if we’re going to be dawdling out there, though.”

Harry is almost surprised at the cool trickle of his own magic, starting from the top of his head and running over his entire body unprompted. He doesn’t dwell on the fact that he’s never cast a glamour before, that he couldn’t even name the incantation if he was asked. 

Remus and Sirius, to their credit, only look surprised for a moment. “Right then,” Sirius nods shakily. “That’ll do.”

Harry glances at the wall-mirror as they pass it on their way out and sees Dudley Dursley.

The taste of fresh air almost sends Harry to his knees, but he manages to keep walking, following the two men as they descend the steps of Grimmauld Place and continue on down the street. The night is quiet and crisp, their footsteps the only sound aside from the distant noise of traffic. The street they walk is all but abandoned.

“I’m sorry about all that,” Remus says, the first to break the silence. “We didn’t want to wake any of the others.”

“Right,” Harry says slowly. “Why is that, exactly?”

The two men are quiet and Harry feels himself prickling, but his magic somehow feels more manageable in the open space—less like a lion pacing a cage. 

“We’re taking you back to Voldemort,” Sirius says, and Harry stops dead in his tracks.

“You’re _ what?_”

Remus and Sirius stop too. They’re standing at the entrance of an abandoned playground. The creak of the swing being caught by the breeze feels too loud in Harry’s ears. His eyes land on the swingset and the chains freeze in place.

Sirius and Remus look almost uneasy. “There’s been talk,” Sirius starts gently. “Dumbledore mostly, but there are others that support him. Not all of us, of course, but a few.”

“And there are a fair few that we can’t be sure which side they stand on,” Remus adds.

Sirius nods. “It’s all up in the air. We just… can’t be sure. We don’t know that we have the power to keep you safe.”

“Safe from _ who _?” Harry asks. “Dumbledore?”

Sirius scrubs a hand down his face. Then, apparently deciding to skip theatrics, says bluntly, “Dumbledore wants to kill you.”

Remus continues. “If it were just him we might stand a chance to talk him out of it, but there are others… There are members of the Order who believe you’re no longer worth the risk.”

Harry turns this over in his head, mind working quickly. Dumbledore is no surprise to him. He’s always known that if it were to come down to it Dumbledore would kill him, but who else? Moody, perhaps. Kingsley. The members who didn’t raise Harry, who aren’t his family. “Well,” he breathes out shakily. “That’s really not too surprising.”

Remus and Sirius glance at each other but Harry can’t read their look. “If it came down to it,” Remus says, turning back to Harry, “you know that we would fight for you.”

“I know that,” Harry says and means it. “And if it came down to it, Dumbledore would kill you too.”

Remus shuts his eyes and Sirius nods. “You know he isn’t above splitting us down the middle.”

“So you want to take me back to Voldemort?” Harry questions. “You think I’m safer with him than I am here?”

“He can’t hurt you,” Remus says. “He doesn’t _ want _to hurt you, either, and he’d burn down all of Great Britain before he let Dumbledore near you if he knew what he’s been planning.”

“But you don’t like it,” Harry says for him.

“No,” Remus agrees.

“Couldn’t despise it more,” Sirius confirms.

“You want to take me back to him… tonight?” Harry says, and it’s like it has only just registered in his mind. He feels his magic jump. “You can’t- no. I need-” he swallows hard. “I need to say goodbye to Draco. And Ron and Hermione, too. You couldn’t have let me tell him, at least?”

“He would never have let you go,” Sirius says quietly.

“That’s not true!” Harry objects. “He would have if I explained, but to just disappear? Up and leave our bed in the middle of the night?” Harry ignores the niggling voice reminding him that that’s exactly what he would have done, anyway. At least this way Draco will have someone else to blame. “And Hermione and Ron? They just got me back- they’ll be devastated.”

“Harry,” Remus interrupts, “it isn’t permanent.”

“Bullshit, it isn’t permanent,” he snaps. One of the chains breaks and falls with a clamour of metal on the wood chips below the swings. “You think he’ll let me go?”

“I’ve told you before and I will keep telling you—there’s always another way.”

“Not with Voldemort there isn’t!”

“The prophecy, Harry. You heard it that night. What power do you possess that Voldemort doesn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says heatedly. A second chain snaps.

“Why did touching your wrist nearly kill him, but leave you untouched? Why have you been so sure that he’ll need to be the one to die first?”

Harry tries to think rationally enough to answer, but he’s losing it. “The mark doesn’t work on him—his body, soul, whatever, it doesn’t know how to process it.” 

“What is a soulmark?”

“Fate,” Harry scrambles, “divine intervention, I don’t _ know_!”

“Love,” Remus says forcefully. “You can love.” Harry blinks thrice, mouth opening and closing. After a moment Remus pulls Harry against his chest and rests his chin atop his head. It’s a rare gesture of affection that would have made Harry uncomfortable in any other situation, but there is no room for discomfort now; this is a goodbye.

His jaw moves against Harry’s head when he next speaks. “Love. That is the only power with any hope of saving him.”

“You mean I’m the only one with any hope of saving him,” Harry corrects him a bit helplessly, and Remus nods. 

He feels Sirius’ arms wrap around the two of them before he speaks. “You have to love him, Harry, and you have to allow him to love you.” Harry clenches his eyes shut tighter. “You can come back to us. No one has to die.”

“Okay,” Harry whispers, directly into Remus’ chest, and he’s surprised at how fervently he wants to believe in the possibility of returning. “Okay.”

_ Love. It tastes foreign in his mouth. _

_ But he can still taste it. _

“We have to go,” Remus says with a sense of urgency that never quite left. The cold air bites Harry’s cheeks when Remus pulls away and offers his arm. “We had to dismantle Dumbledore’s wards to even get you out the door, and I can’t imagine it will be long before he notices. Voldemort knows we’re coming.”

Harry reels back slightly. “You talked to him?”

“We sent a patronus,” Sirius explains. “We weren’t sure it would work, but sure enough he sent someone back with a message.”

“Death Eater nearly got himself killed surprising me at the pub,” Remus adds, “but he didn’t so much as twitch for his wand. Under Imperius, I suspect.”

“Or just very strict orders,” Harry mutters.

“But it worked,” Remus concludes. “Sirius and I won’t be able to pass through the wards but they’ll be open for you. We can take you to the Manor.”

Harry’s heart picks up at the thought of being back there, of standing inside those walls again. It only beats more violently at the thought of seeing Voldemort, although the reasons aren’t nearly as similar as Harry wishes they would be.

“You two will be safe?” he asks.

“I believe you can answer that better than either of us, but Voldemort did give his word.”

“Not safe from Voldemort,” Harry clarifies. “He wouldn’t hurt you in front of me right now—not when you’re the ones bringing me back willingly. I mean will you be safe with Dumbledore? What will he do when he finds out you let me go?”

“If we’re lucky,” Sirius says, “he won’t. You’re plenty strong enough to dismantle wards yourself, after all, and you’re plenty capable of casting a patronus. There’s no reason for him to believe we helped you escape at all.”

_ Because I would have, _ Harry thinks. _ And if anyone knows that it’s Dumbledore. _

“But none of that will matter if Dumbledore comes to Grimmauld Place and finds all three of us gone,” Remus says. “It’s time to go.”

“Wait!” Harry protests, stepping back from his reach. “Draco, Ron and Hermione. You have to tell them why I left.”

“We’ll explain everything to them,” Sirius promises.

“Don’t let Draco self-destruct,” he urges.

“We won’t.”

“Harry,” Remus says and takes a step toward him. “It’s time to go.”

“Okay,” he relents. “Okay.”

Across from him, Sirius takes Remus’ hand. Harry shuts his eyes and shivers at the cool sensation of his glamour falling, then there is nothing to do but follow suit, and soon enough the familiar squeeze of sidealong compresses Harry’s body. They reappear moments later, Harry leaning on Remus’ shoulder as he regains his balance and his bearings. 

The world around him comes into focus in pieces. The first thing he registers is Malfoy Manor, white, shiny and artificial looking, further off than Harry would have expected the property to extend. They don’t stand on a road, but in a large expanse of grass. There’s a clear line where the property must end, where the grass transitions abruptly from neatly trimmed, filed, and alarmingly green even in the dark, to the overgrown, ragged grass that’s brushing Harry’s ankles. Hovering in the air above the separation Harry can make out the subtle glimmer of wards.

And beyond the wards… 

At least a dozen hooded figures stand just beyond the property line. None have their wands drawn, but Harry can feel their heavy gazes from below their cloaks, feel every one of his movements being calculated. He catches Remus’ forearm without looking when he feels it shift to where Harry knows his wand is concealed. The man freezes obediently, but he can feel the tension radiating from both him and Sirius from where he stands. 

“No one has their wands drawn,” Harry hisses. “Don’t give them a reason to.”

Harry’s eyes latch onto the movement as one of the frontmost Death Eater’s extends their hand. Remus stiffens and Harry tightens his grip as the Death Eater deliberately rolls up his sleeve and presses a single dark finger to his wrist, right where his Dark Mark must be.

“They’re calling him,” Sirius says unnecessarily. Harry shifts to stand between Sirius and Remus, letting them press their shoulders to his more for their sake than his own. He doesn’t take his eyes off the Death Eater, and not a single one of the hooded figures turn their gazes from him.

“Don’t talk to him,” Harry says quickly. “Don’t say anything.”

“Harry-”

“Thank you,” Harry interrupts. “For everything. Thank you.”

He doesn’t look at them when he says it and neither man has a chance to respond before a deafening crack rings across the field, and there is a man standing across from them—a man who eerily resembles a certain Dark Lord.

Harry stops breathing.

“What in Godric’s name?” Sirius exhales, but Harry doesn’t hear him.

He’s sure at this moment that if he doesn’t get to Voldemort his skin will tear in two. He’s blinded by it.

Harry knows that Voldemort is supposed to be the enemy—he does. He knows he’s supposed to be holding grudges, but he can also hear Sirius’ voice in his head; _ You have to love him, Harry, and you have to allow him to love you. _Harry doesn’t love Voldemort, not nearly, but he does crave him, and he did—in the most twisted, involuntary way possible—miss him desperately.

Harry is going to tear out of his skin.

There’s nothing to do. There is nothing else to do.

Harry stumbles forward, not caring about Death Eaters, not caring about witnesses, not caring about Remus and Sirius’ arms reaching for him in protest as he crosses the wards just out of their reach. He steps forward, not caring about pride or consequences or looking back. Harry staggers forward one-mindedly, eyes locked on the figure only twenty feet away from him. Human and not. His salvation, and not. Everything, everything.

He passes the Death Eaters without a glance, continuing toward the Dark Lord like a blind man toward light and doesn’t bother slowing when he reaches him. Harry stumbles right into his chest and feels himself pulled away the moment they make contact. Where they materialize, Harry doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. Neither lets go of the other.

So perhaps Voldemort will be his undoing. Maybe he really will burn Harry alive, reduce him to ashes, but Harry knows one cannot burn without the other. It’s true they only know how to set each other aflame, don’t know how to touch without setting the other alight. So maybe they will burn, that’s always been a possibility. No one has ever denied it.

Or perhaps. Perhaps.

Perhaps they will rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that wraps up part two of three
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)  
asks and messages are always welcomed <3


	22. Jump

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaand we're back. holy moly.
> 
> I'm happy to announce that I've survived my first semester of college (astonishingly) which is very exciting! I spent break outlining and pre-writing part three, and we're back to monthly to bi-monthly updates. Not to mention that we have a chapter count!!! That's insane!!!!
> 
> I put my sweat and blood into this chapter and I'm quite nervous to finally put it up, so I can only hope it stands for itself. As always, I hope you're all staying happy and healthy. Much love to you all.

_ So what of virtue and what of vice? What of moral and immoral, of wickedness and goodness, of right and wrong? He loves him, and a love like this can only be the bastard child of both. _

**Part Three:**

**The Virtue and the Vice**

There is something about Voldemort, something _ other, _that has always had an eerie capability to wipe Harry’s mind of any and everything else in the world. It’s something that Harry isn’t sure he’d be able to name if he were asked, but he knows it. He knows it as well as he knows himself, perhaps.

So when he and Voldemort materialize in a room he doesn’t recognize, as Harry leaves behind all that he nearly died to return to but a few months ago, when Harry breathes him in and his chest heats with that glorious warmth, Harry forgets it all. He forgets all but himself and Voldemort, because it is what he’s always been best at. In moments like these and moments nothing like these—in a room below Hogwarts castle, in a graveyard hundreds of miles from here, in a room filled with prophecies—Harry has always known how to let his sights narrow, how to let his focus center in on the man that has always been as much a part of Harry as he himself is. This is familiar. It is right.

The moment they’ve landed on their own two feet he’s collapsing into Voldemort, his fingers fisting his cloak and his face pressed to his chest, breathing him in. He’s hardly able to breathe, his lungs refusing to obey his command until he’s gotten as close to Voldemort as he can physically manage, and Harry knows this is insane, he does. He just can’t find it in him to believe it matters.

It doesn’t, anyway, because Voldemort isn’t stepping away from him either. He isn’t pulling away or pushing Harry back. Voldemort is holding Harry and Harry is settling into his skin. Harry doesn’t care about wars or grudges or right or wrong—not in the face of this and not in the throes of the pain itching at his skin. Voldemort is fixing him. Voldemort is soothing his undoing.

“Harry,” he’s breathing, over and over. “Harry, Harry, Harry,” and Merlin, he’s so damn warm. Voldemort is _ warm warm warm _ and Harry is being thawed. “_Harry, Harry,_” and Harry is being pieced together.

“Merlin,” he’s nearly whimpering, “oh gods, oh hell, _ fuck._”

Voldemort starts to pull away and Harry panics on instinct alone, fisting his hands tighter into his robes, pulling him closer, burrowing further into his chest. He can’t let go, but Voldemort hushes him. “Just for a moment,” he coaxes, “come here.” With another tug Harry loosens his grip enough to be pulled to the loveseat just behind them, where Voldemort sits, pulling Harry with him. Maybe he’s expecting Harry to settle beside him, but he clambers directly into Voldemort’s lap, curling into him like a child.

Sitting there with his head tucked underneath Voldemort’s chin, Harry begins to make the distinction between what’s his and what’s Voldemort’s. He can feel him again, an energy that’s as foreign as it is familiar, like something he has known his entire life but never been bold enough to touch. Still, the two of them blend seamlessly, two harmonized notes amidst an orchestra of white noise. Harry can’t find it unpleasant at all. There is something here.

Harry might regret this later. He isn’t thinking about it.

_ Warm warm warm. _

“Harry,” Voldemort says, but this time it’s less like a prayer and more like a curse, “what did they do to you?”

It is then that Harry begins to cry.

Maybe it’s the fact of what happened finally having a moment to process or the overwhelming press of emotion on all sides of him, or maybe it’s just the relief, but Harry cries and he cries in earnest. Voldemort stiffens under him, although whether that can be attributed to discomfort or concern Harry couldn’t guess. What Harry _ can _ feel is the sudden fierceness that seems to overtake Voldemort’s emotions, turning all their edges sharp. He’s worried, and _ murderous, _the latter of which Harry at least finds familiar.

He doesn’t want to say it aloud yet, doesn’t want to have to put words to what happened, so he does the next best thing—he tilts his head up, allowing his gaze to drift over Voldemort’s softened features for a moment before settling on his eyes.

For all of his new humanness, they’re still red.

———

Voldemort worried he would forget the color of Harry’s eyes, but they look just the same. These are the eyes he’s been seeing in his sleep for months, the same color painted onto the backs of his eyelids. Physically, Harry has changed so little. It is all so wretchedly, beautifully the same.

Harry feels small against him, like he’ll shatter if Voldemort touches him too carelessly, but Voldemort knows better than to think of Harry as anything but lethal. And Voldemort—Voldemort wants to consume him. Voldemort has been on the brink of his own undoing for months with the hunger of this. 

He’s so taken by him that several moments pass before he realizes what Harry is offering. His surprise is enough to make him falter, but Harry holds his gaze and, well, Voldemort is not the type of man to ask twice.

The only other time Voldemort looked into Harry’s mind this way it was chaos, so chaos is what Voldemort expects to find now. He braces himself once more for the storm, for the whipping wind and the strobe-like flashes of memories, the glimpses of a past that Voldemort can’t grasp. Instead, he finds… peace. Quiet. Like the still of a lake without anything living there to stir the surface. Voldemort has known Harry to be many things—restless, stubborn, fierce, to name a few—but he has never known him to be peaceful. All the better that way, Voldemort supposes. He is his soulmate, after all, and what has Voldemort _ ever _known of peace?

_ This. _ This moment is perhaps the most peace Voldemort has ever been permitted to taste.

This time when Voldemort slips into Harry’s mind he doesn’t have to go looking for memories; Harry offers them to him, there for the taking without resistance. A flicker of paranoia overtakes Voldemort for a moment, fearing suddenly that Harry is tricking him, somehow. This is too easy, surely.

But the suspicion passes in hardly any time at all. Harry, after all, is a pitiful liar and an even worse Occlumens, not even to mention the fact that Voldemort can _ sense his emotions. _If Harry had any ill intention Voldemort would know in the very second it occurred to him. He shakes off the paranoia.

Harry’s memories are a vague cloud of mist in front of him, flickering with flashes of Harry’s previous months. He takes slow steps toward it. There’s Sirius Black the Azkaban escapee holding a glass of something bronze and golden, the junior Malfoy curled up in a library and Narcissa Malfoy sitting straight and dignified in a window seat, looking every bit the picture of elegance she had before her leave. They flicker too quickly for Voldemort to really take them in, and as if on instinct alone he reaches forward. The moment his fingers brush the mist—cool to the touch, he notices absently—he is falling.

This time Voldemort lands in a sitting room adorned with outdated furnishings and dark wallpaper. There is a fireplace with its mantle lined with an array of whirring, buzzing little devices and the couches are canvased in the most wretched floral pattern Voldemort has ever laid eyes on. His gaze stutters there, so Voldemort steps forward, brushing his fingers against the back of one sofa gingerly. The room spins, and when it settles Harry is on the couch, sitting across from a woman and bouncing his knees, eyes darting about uneasily. The woman herself is bony and kind-looking, somewhere in her early thirties if Voldemort were to guess.

“There is no right way to heal,” she’s explaining as Voldemort circles the couch, eyes glued to Harry. He looks… sick. Tired. He looks like he’s begun the process of decomposing, and Voldemort pictures briefly the healthy, well cared for version of Harry that escaped from him months ago. He’s so different here.

“I’m not sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, Ethyl,” memory-Harry says wryly, quirking his lips humourlessly. “I’m a tough case.”

“I have some idea,” the woman—Ethyl—says. “And I believe you’re underestimating me.”

“I believe _ you’re _ underestimating _ me,_” Harry mutters, picking at his cuticles. Sulky, stubborn child that he is.

“Then we’ll start,” Ethyl declares, smiling no less kindly, “and we shall see which of us proves the other wrong.”

Voldemort thrills slightly at the stubborn set Harry’s mouth takes on at this—of course, when has the brat ever been able to turn down a challenge—and as he meets the woman’s eyes they blur out of focus and disappear, leaving Voldemort staring at the place Harry sat. 

Back in Harry’s mindscape there is a feather lying innocently on the end table, harmless in all aspects except for appearing oddly out of place, so Voldemort brushes his fingers over it, letting the room spin and settle until Harry and the werewolf—Remus Lupin—have materialized. Harry is pinning the feather with a glare so fierce one would guess it did something to personally offend him, and Lupin looks nothing but apprehensive.

“It’s not that simple,” Harry says unhappily, tearing his eyes from the feather in favor of pinning Lupin with a desperate look. Voldemort can feel the boy’s magic in the air, such a familiar thing it is to him now, and the taste of it makes his mouth water. The air is charged, nearly crackling with it. “I’m not anyone’s master, not even my own. My magic is like its own person!”

“Try,” Lupin responds, eyes studying Harry carefully. “Keep your hand relaxed but brisk, now. You know the wand movement.”

“Yes, now if only I _ had _ a wand,” Harry snaps, and Voldemort grins wickedly at the snark. How he missed this. Lupin’s eyes tilt toward the ceiling in a gesture of _ Merlin, help me, _that Voldemort is all too familiar with.

The two continue conversing while Voldemort studies the scene, head tilted in curiosity. The werewolf is coaching Harry into wandless magic, it seems. Harry, for all his power, is not a magician attuned to detail or control. If it were any other wizard Voldemort would expect a failed attempt and eventual defeat, but not Harry. He watches rapturously as Harry turns back to the feather, setting his shoulders in that way he does when he knows he’s going to win.

Voldemort knows Harry. He knows what he looks like on the verge of attack, eyes narrowed and muscles coiled, and he knows what he _ feels _like. Harry’s emotions are so powerful they stir the air in a room, and Voldemort feels painfully in tune with every shift of Harry’s mind. 

Voldemort knows Harry’s magic, but not the way it is now. Now it is a palpable thing, restless and fierce and making the air crackle with energy. Harry doesn’t seem to notice, eyes tightly shut and breaths even but laboured. Then his eyes open just wide enough to focus on the feather and his hand raises, and Voldemort knows that he will succeed.

It takes Voldemort a few seconds after Harry casts the spell to realize that not only the feather, but _ everything in the room _is levitating. Harry takes even longer, whirling around in excitement before freezing solid, eyes wide and mouth agape. Lupin is similarly dumbstruck, eyes locked on Harry as if he’s never seen him before. Voldemort understands the sentiment.

“That went better than expected,” Harry breathes, trying for humour, and in the moment that the objects fall Voldemort is pulled from the memory, once again standing in the empty sitting room.

He waits just long enough to stop his head spinning before moving on.

The bottle of liquor on the coffee table offers flashes of memories rather than an isolated scene. There is the man Voldemort recognizes as Sirius Black, wrapped in a robe and handing Harry a glass filled with the dark scotch.

“Why didn’t I see you today?” Harry asks, twirling the glass between his fingers and not quite looking at the man.

“They’re afraid I’ll treat you like a human being,” Black responds. There’s a touch of dry humour to his tone that doesn’t quite manage to cover the sadness of it, and Voldemort tilts his head. When Harry doesn’t immediately respond, Black continues. “Harry, do you know what proper men do when they come back from war?”

“What?” Harry says slowly, laughing a little and straightening up as his godfather does. The laugh is echoey, too much space around the edges, but it’s something.

“They drown their sorrow,” Black says, grinning and shooting Harry a wink. The boy’s grin widens in the slightest. “Bottoms up.”

They tilt their glasses back and the scene changes, and suddenly Voldemort is surrounded by people. His eyes seek out Harry, still sitting on the couch where the last memory left him. Draco Malfoy is beside him, tossing back a bottle of the same liquor and passing it to Harry, who mirrors him. Then he stands and holds out a hand, Harry looking up at him a bit dazedly, eyes just glossy enough to betray his tipsiness. “A dance?” the Malfoy heir offers.

Harry blinks, then his face splits with a slow, wide smile, and he takes the boy’s hand.

The room spins, and it’s Harry and Sirius again. The boy looks healthier than the last time the two sat beside each other, but more afraid.

“They weren’t… disgusted with me?” Harry hedges, twiddling with the glass in his hand. He looks as if the wrong answer could destroy him.

His godfather sets down his own glass, looking shocked at the suggestion. “Harry, how could they be? _ None _of us can be. This was your soul’s choice, not yours, and souls… Souls don’t choose wrong.”

Voldemort’s eyebrows quirk. He steps closer.

“You can say that? That this isn’t wrong?” Harry’s voice comes out with a desperate edge and he flinches visibly, tossing back the last of his drink. Voldemort watches the glass refill on its own as the godfather feigns ignorance.

“I don’t pretend to understand fate,” Black says, “but I have known her my entire life. She doesn’t make mistakes.”

The room spins, and Voldemort is standing alone. He takes a moment before moving, suddenly overwhelmed by the pieces of Harry _ everywhere, _but he knows this isn’t what he’s here for. Harry let him in for a reason—to see something that he doesn’t want to speak aloud—and Voldemort intends to find it.

He strays from the sitting room, following his gut to the kitchen. There’s already a memory playing out as he enters. Harry is sitting on the kitchen table with his feet propped on the bench below him. Remus Lupin is there again, running his wand over Harry. Diagnostic spells.

“Well,” the man breathes out, looking troubled, “there’s no curse damage or traces, so that’s ruled out. Your magic levels are steady, whether they’re being used or not. Physically you’re in… perfect condition. You’re nowhere near malnourished and you don’t have any current injuries but for a few bruises.” There’s a stretch of silence during which Harry keeps his eyes glued to the floor and Lupin peers at him contemplatively. Then he says, “I need to know what happened there if I’m going to help you.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

There’s another stretch of tense silence that Voldemort swears is longer than the last. Lupin is the one to break it, although he gives Harry plenty chance. “I suppose it could have been anything,” he says finally, carrying on as if he’d never asked Harry at all. “—maybe you really did just need a bit of food in your system. Believe it or not, wizards are not immune to low blood-sugar.” Harry smiles, looking like someone has held a wand to his head to make him do it.. “You’ll tell me if there are any more symptoms?”

Harry nods and the scene whirls and returns, although the two have hardly moved, their wardrobe changes the only signifier that time has passed at all. Harry still looks sick, but now he looks sick and _ angry. _Sitting on the bench a few feet away from Harry and Lupin is Black. The two men seem to be ever present company here.

Harry pushes himself up and off the table, brushing past the werewolf and toward where Voldemort stands in the doorway. “I have more important things to be concerned with right now,” he says, voice trembling slightly.

“Like what?” Black shoots at Harry’s back cruelly. “Befriending a blood supremacist?”

Voldemort watches Harry’s face contort before he whirls around and winces in sympathy for Black. It is deserved, perhaps, but Harry’s fury is not something Voldemort would wish upon any decent man.

“Don’t you dare,” the boy hisses. Voldemort edges around the scene as Remus steps into Harry’s warpath preemptively. A wise choice, Voldemort muses. He only prickles with irritation slightly at Harry’s defensiveness for the Malfoy heir. “Don’t you say a _ thing _ about Draco in front of me.”

“And what will you do if I decide to?” Sirius goads. “Hex me? Curse me? You said it yourself—you’re powerless this way. Not only were you stupid enough to all but hand yourself over to Voldemort, but you let him make you _ weak_.” 

Voldemort braces himself by force of habit.

Harry lunges toward the man at the table and Lupin gets his arms around his waist. Harry kicks and thrashes, his feet pummeling the man’s shins viciously. Voldemort has to make an effort not to grin at the sight of it—it’s amusing to see Harry like this and not be on the other end of his flailing limbs—but the expression is wiped off his face in the next instant. There is a tremendous crash and a great shattering of china all around them, and by the time Voldemort can figure what has happened every piece of glass in the room has been reduced to shards.

Harry stumbles forward as Lupin’s arms slacken around him, looking to Black with wide, horrified eyes. Black, in contrast, couldn’t look more triumphant. “Can’t do wandless magic, huh?”

The scene whirls and Voldemort is surprised to find himself in a different room entirely. The room is primarily wooden and full of splinters, with one bricked wall and a sloped ceiling that suggests an attic space. There are combat dummies shoved to one side of the room and Sirius Black in the middle of it, attacking Harry. Voldemort tenses at the sight of it before he takes in Harry’s expression. The set to his jaw. The lack of anything that might suggest fear. 

Sirius Black is firing spell upon spell as Harry maintains a shield in front of him, no wand in sight. Each of them hits the shield and disappears with hardly a ripple, absorbed soundly without even the risk of a rebound. Harry is a fierce little thing, not even a sheen of sweat to suggest he’s worn out by the exercise. It’s phenomenal. Voldemort wants nothing more in the world than to conquer Harry in a duel, not that he’ll ever send a hex in Harry’s direction again. Not that he’d even be able to.

Voldemort, lost in thought, only refocuses on the scene when Harry screams. He processes the telltale red flash of a _ crucio, _ sees Harry freeze in horror and has to hold himself back from intervening despite knowing that he has no capability to, then the spell lands and fizzles out against Harry’s shield like a _ stupefy _ might. Moments of shocked silence, and Harry collapses. Then the room is spinning and the scene has shifted anew.

And there is Harry lying in a bed that Voldemort has seen before, Harry looking exactly as Voldemort has seen him before. But before… before Voldemort thought he was dreaming. The realization that he wasn’t hits him like a curse to the chest. It was one thing to see him this way when he believed without a shadow of a doubt that it was fabricated, but to know that it was _ his Harry. _ His Harry staring at him in quiet contemplation. His Harry whose soft eyes simply _ looked _at him, drifting across his features as if trying to commit them to memory. Voldemort finds himself hungry anew.

But now it isn’t Voldemort standing at the end of Harry’s sickbed, but rather the woman—Ethyl—at his bedside. Harry looks… well. Harry looks like he’s dying. He’s flushed red with fever and his skin is shining with sweat, his eyes glassy and vaguely unfocused. He says, “I can’t tell you about him.”

_ Him. Him. Him. _

“Him,” Ethyl repeats. “Do you mean Voldemort?”

“No,” Harry denies, then shakes his head. “Yes, maybe,” he concedes. Voldemort and Ethyl are watching him slip.

“You saw him?”

“Always,” Harry responds, then his face screws up like he’s confused himself.

“Who is Voldemort to you, Harry?” Ethyl asks. Relentless woman. Voldemort’s breath stutters.

“Everything.” Harry is smiling and Voldemort isn’t breathing. “A contradiction.” Harry is smiling, smiling. “He’s a goddamn trainwreck, is what he is.”

The room spins. The Malfoy heir is in bed beside Harry, fast asleep, and Lupin is shaking him awake. Voldemort follows them down the stairs, listens to their hushed conversation with Black, and follows their silent footsteps outside. The buckle of Harry’s knees betrays how long it must have been since he was let outside, but the boy says nothing.

When Sirius Black says his name Voldemort listens until the rushing of blood in his ears is too loud to make out the rest of their words.

_ Dumbledore wants to kill Harry. _

There is no gentler word than fury to describe how Voldemort’s chest threatens to burst open with hellfire, and still it does not say enough. He has hated Albus Dumbledore since the ugly old man set his wardrobe aflame at Wool’s orphanage, but he has never wanted him dead more than he does at this moment.

_ Dumbledore was going to kill Harry. _

Never.

The conversation carries on and Voldemort half pays attention, but he knows he’s found exactly what Harry wants him to. Learned what Harry can’t even bear to say out loud. That those he considered his family betrayed him, those who offered him protection became the enemy, and Voldemort—_ oh. _Voldemort has become his salvation.

This he can work with.

When Voldemort pulls himself from Harry’s memories—more mindful this time than last to extract himself gently—the boy’s mouth is hanging slightly open and his eyes are almost glazed over. Voldemort can only stare at him as the memories he just witnessed play over in his head again. Shattering or levitating every object in a room. Blocking unforgivables. The _ power _this boy holds.

_ And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… _

“Harry Potter,” Voldemort breathes. It is almost reverent. “My soul.”

Harry hasn’t looked away since coming out of it, but now he drops his head, his cheek pressed against Voldemort’s heart. “M’tired,” he mumbles, and before Voldemort can say another word Harry has nodded off soundly against his chest.

———

Harry wakes up in a familiar room and opens his eyes to Pipkey’s face only inches from his own. He shouts, jolting backward to the other end of the bed.

“Master Voldemort is wanting you for breakfast,” she squeaks as if nothing had just transpired.

It takes Harry a few moments of staring in shock at the house elf before he fully pieces together where he is and why. If he tries very hard he can convince himself that last night was only a particularly vivid dream. He half expects to blink and be back at Grimmauld Place, waking up next to Draco and hearing him snark at Harry for hogging the sheets.

But last night was not a nightmare; it was very, very real.

“You call him master, now?” is what he finally says. Pipkey blinks at him owlishly, like the question has boggled her.

“He is being the master of the manor, sir.”

“Right,” Harry says slowly. He’ll ask Voldemort about it later, he decides, lest Pipkey start banging her head against the dresser upon further questioning. “I need to get ready,” he tells her. “And I don’t know my way to the dining room.”

“Get ready and Pipkey will be leading you there, sir.”

“Right,” he says again, and rolls out of bed.

———

The Malfoy’s dining table is exceedingly long for a Manor that previously housed three members, in Harry’s opinion. There is a meal set out on either end of the table, and Voldemort is seated at one, already eating.

Harry… has never seen him eat before. It shouldn’t surprise him—everything needs to eat, after all—but Harry thinks he would be less surprised if he walked in on Voldemort draining a muggle of their blood for breakfast.

He stays frozen in the doorway where Pipkey leaves him. The awkward tension in the room is almost palpable, and Harry shifts from one foot to the other, throat locked. Just hours ago he had— what, fallen asleep on Voldemort’s lap? And been put to bed after? Now the thought of sitting down to breakfast with him feels like the most foreign thing in the world. For the first time since Harry disappeared from the Department of Mysteries, he isn’t trying to run from Voldemort. They have no reason to fight. 

This is unfamiliar territory for both of them, really.

“Please, feel free to sit at your leisure,” Voldemort says, amusement clear in his tone.

“Right,” Harry says, and proceeds to stay exactly where he is. Voldemort snorts softly and takes a bite of eggs, not looking away from Harry all the while. Harry watches the action in a sort of absent-minded fascination, then gets distracted by Voldemort’s jaw. “I’ve never really pictured you eating,” he says by means of explanation.

“You may be surprised to learn that I also need to do things like eat and drink to survive.”

“I am, actually,” Harry admits. Voldemort tilts his eyes toward the ceiling, a nonverbal approximation of _ Salazar, help me. _

“I am not so inhuman as you wish me to be,” Voldemort says, and Harry blinks a few times. “Sit and eat.”

Harry does, approaching the table as if it’s a wild animal that might bite him. Voldemort observes this with a spark of amusement in his eye and Harry thinks about hexing him. Just for a moment.

His plate of food is still steaming when he sits down—charmed, no doubt. There are far more utensils set out than he’s accustomed to.

“Is there anyone else in the Manor?” Harry broaches the subject after a few bites of egg, looking over the surplus of empty seats between them.

“No,” Voldemort answers, not offering any more information.

Harry is already expecting the worst, and as such doesn’t want to ask and be given confirmation of his fear. He does anyway. “Lucius?”

Voldemort seems taken off guard by the question, putting his fork down to look at Harry. “What reason do you have to care for Lucius Malfoy?”

“I don’t,” Harry says, almost defensively. Voldemort quirks his brow. “Care for him, I mean. Draco is… my best friend, I guess. I think Lucius is a waste of space, but Draco loves him. That means he matters to me.”

Voldemort’s expression changes from vague amusement to genuine puzzlement at this. Harry enjoys the expression, he decides—the furrowed brows and pursed lips. It’s satisfying. “I didn’t punish Lucius for his son’s actions, if that’s what you’re asking me. Lucius Malfoy remained loyal to me.”

“He remained loyal to you to protect his family,” Harry says sharply and instantly regrets it, but Voldemort doesn’t seem surprised by this.

“I’m well aware of the intention behind his actions,” he says. “All the same, he has not betrayed me.”

“The house-elves call you master.”

“Yes.”

“Lucius is their master.”

“For the foreseeable future, Lucius Malfoy does not live here. That makes me master of the house, and the elves refer to me as such. It is only their nature.”

Harry stares at Voldemort, speechless. He’s never heard him so… reasonable.

“What happened to you?” he asks finally. “To your face and… you.” Voldemort snorts softly and Harry waves his hand vaguely. “And that, the laughing. You laugh now. You smile, too.”

“Did I not before?”

“Well, they were significantly more maniacal, then.”

As if to prove his point Voldemort smiles slowly, starting at one corner of his mouth until it’s taken over his entire expression, and it would be impossible for Harry not to notice how _ pretty _ it is. He tries anyway, because _ no. _Just— No.

“Maniacal,” Voldemort repeats, sounding amused. Harry shifts in his seat a little uncomfortably.

“I’ve never seen you laugh about anything other than like, murder or torture before—” Harry cuts off suddenly.

“Before I showed up in your dream,” Voldemort says after a pause, finishing Harry’s aborted sentence. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?” Harry doesn’t know what the safe answer is, so he doesn’t say anything. Voldemort continues, scraping together another bite of food casually. “Is that the only time we met?”

“Yes,” Harry says a bit stiffly, and elects not to mention Nagini’s visits.

“I thought you seemed different, that time,” Voldemort hums thoughtfully. “But I didn’t think…”

“I’d let you in?” Harry asks. When Voldemort doesn’t respond he continues anyway. “I was sick. There was nothing I could do.”

Voldemort’s eyes flick to Harry’s, glinting. “Don’t pretend that you did not _ ache _for me, Harry. Lie to your godfather or Draco Malfoy, not to me.”

“I am not-” Harry starts to protest.

“Nothing you can say or do will convince me that you didn’t suffer from my absence as I did yours. I will repeat myself only this once: _ do not lie to me. _”

Harry swallows and falls silent, staring at Voldemort from across the table. 

Voldemort’s transformation is both tangible and intangible. There’s the most obvious, which are his features. His slightly raised nose, fuller lips, softer bone structure. There’s color to his skin, now, in his cheeks. But there is some _ otherness _about him, now. Something that Harry isn’t able to pinpoint but is apparent in all that Voldemort is. He is simply… more human. Voldemort is more human than he is monster, in every aspect of his being.

How can one be so different and so very, very unchanged?

Voldemort continues, tone less severe but just as serious. “As much as you have tried to fight it and as much as your extremely flexible moral compass insists it’s wrong, you and I cannot live without each other. There’s no running from that, now.”

“What changed?” Last he’d checked _ Voldemort _was fighting it just as adamantly as Harry, after all.

“I did,” Voldemort answers simply. “Your absence was… nearly unbearable.”

Harry is rendered speechless by that. He decides then that the conversation is quickly approaching dangerous territory and steers it in a slightly different direction. “We have to talk about it.”

Voldemort’s eyes flash with something, a clear sign that he knows exactly what ‘_ it’ _Harry is referring to. He plays dumb anyway. “Talk about what?”

“You killed my family,” Harry states without emotion. It’s matter-of-fact. 

“I killed the dirty, abusive muggles that you were abandoned to,” Voldemort says, voice scalding. Harry is taken aback by the hatred in his voice, despite knowing that it isn’t intended for him. “I never touched your _ family._”

Harry thinks about his _ real _family, every one of them safe and sound, and realizes that he can’t argue. “Why?” he asks instead.

“The world is a better place without them.”

“Why else?” Harry pushes. _ Why care? _ he’s asking. _ Why would it matter? _

“For you,” Voldemort says stiffly, teeth gritted, eyes flashing. “I could not focus, I could not _ think _about anything other than retribution.”

“Piers was just a kid,” Harry says quietly. Gravely.

Voldemort rolls his eyes and Harry thinks about casting a wart-hex on him. “_Piers Polkiss _ has done nothing in the past four years but use other people as punching bags, steal muggle vehicles and drop out of high school. He hurt you and would have continued hurting others as long as he lived. The very air he _ breathed _was a waste of resources.”

“He had a _life!_” Harry breathes in disbelief, pushing his chair back from the table to stand. “How can you treat human lives so nonchalantly? You _killed him.”_

“And he hurt you,” Voldemort says simply. “I feel no guilt over that boy’s death, and neither should you.”

Harry opens his mouth to retort before he’s fully processed Voldemort’s words, then shuts it again. He blinks at Voldemort wordlessly. He _ has _been feeling guilty for Piers’ death, hasn’t he? He’s been unable to summon anything for Vernon or Petunia, but Piers… He mourned for him, and he has been blaming himself from the moment he learned what happened to him.

And it took Voldemort pointing it out for Harry to even realize.

“You did not kill Piers Polkiss,” Voldemort says firmly. “I held the wand and I cast the curse. It was _ my _decision, and I find great satisfaction in taking the responsibility for it. You, on the other hand, are not permitted to.”

“Not _ permitted?_” Harry repeats in disbelief.

“That is correct.”

Harry finds himself too tired to fight the point. “Why didn’t you hurt Dudley?”

Voldemort tilts his head. “Because you asked me not to,” he answers like it’s obvious.

“But why would you listen to me?” Harry pushes, frustration leaking into his tone.

“Harry,” Voldemort says softly, then he smiles. Harry can’t decide whether or not it’s mocking. “You will find that there is scarcely a thing in this world I would not do to keep you beside me.”

Harry swallows. “I don’t understand,” he says honestly.

“You do not have to.”

Harry concedes and returns to his seat, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his forehead on them. He sighs tremulously. “How are we supposed to do this?”

_ This. _Being soulmates, living together, their still incomplete bond. Every moment of history that has been stacked against them that they’re now being asked to overcome. How are they supposed to heal? To mend?

“We are going to do what you, my soul, have done every day of your life thus far.” Harry glances up, looking at Voldemort questioningly. And the man… smiles. “We are going to jump, and we are going to figure out how to fly in the midst of our falling.”

———

After breakfast Harry proceeds to wander the manor, trying to get a sense of where things were located and calling for Pipkey whenever he gets too terribly lost. He looks for Nagini but can’t find her anywhere. At dinner he dances around the edge of asking Voldemort but doesn’t. She’ll show up eventually, Harry is sure, whenever she sees fit. In true Nagini fashion. He spends nearly all of his day that way—drifting about, wandlessly dismantling light wards and unlocking doors to keep his magic reigned in and only seeing Voldemort at their two joined meals. The manor is too large to stumble onto each other unintentionally. 

Now Harry can’t sleep. In all the reprieve Grimmauld Place granted him he’s almost forgotten what it feels like to _ crave. _ The symptoms of long-distance separation were harder to endure and much less easily remedied, so Harry doesn’t get _ too _stuck on nostalgia.

This could be remedied, he thinks, then wonders what he has to bloody lose.

Upon further thought he decides that the answer is nothing at all, although his exhausted state admittedly doesn’t lend itself to his best judgement.

So he steps out of bed, gathering the throw blanket around his shoulders and making his way out and into the hallway. He doesn’t strictly know where Voldemort sleeps, but he doesn’t strictly need to. His feet move without his telling them to, a pull in his gut the only direction necessary to lead him there.

After a great many turns and a flight of stairs Harry comes to a stop before a set of double doors, the handles brass and grand looking. For the first time since leaving his bedroom he feels some apprehension. What of his pride? What of the battle that he and Voldemort have been waging against each other for months? On some level Harry knows that opening this door will be accepting defeat, but his skin is buzzing tremendously now and he finds that he doesn’t much care. It’s all so fickle, isn’t it? It’s all so tiring. So what if he wants to cave?

The door is unlocked when Harry tries the handle. His stomach flips.

When he opens the door Nagini is there, craning her head from the foot of the bed, hissing softly in welcome and gliding off the bed to circle Harry. When he doesn’t move she snaps at the air behind his heels, urging him forward. He glares at her.

“Stupid snake,” he mutters, then in parseltongue adds, “_Missed you._”

“_Then get in bed,” _she snarks in response.

Harry opens his mouth to respond but freezes at Voldemort’s voice. “Yes, Harry. Do get in bed so we can sleep.”

Harry can’t quite make him out in the dark, but his voice alone eases whatever it is in Harry that led him here. It’s a slightly different voice than Harry is accustomed to—deeper and smoother than it was just months ago when Harry last heard him—but it’s unmistakably his. The change is more noticeable in the dark and quiet of his bedroom.

For all Harry wanted to come, he hadn’t planned what he’d actually say or do when he got here. He didn’t prepare himself for conversation.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes hastily. “I don’t know why I...” He stops. Swallows.

“It’s fine,” Voldemort responds, his voice slightly raspy. Harry tries to ignore how his muscles melt at the sound of it. “Come.”

So Harry does, taking hesitant steps forward until he’s standing beside the bed, looking down at Voldemort’s bleary eyes. He looks exhausted. “You don’t… mind?” Harry asks awkwardly.

“For Salazar’s sake,” Voldemort groans, though it lacks heat. Then he turns down the covers on Harry’s side. “Lay down. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months.” Harry is shocked still at his tone. There’s a vulnerability in it, like he’s just admitted something that he wasn’t planning to. Voldemort misinterprets his stillness, glancing away from Harry. “I won’t touch you.”

Some part of Harry wants to object to that, but he isn’t ready to stoop that low. This is already a surrender; he has to cling to something.

He drops the throw blanket he still has wrapped around him like a cloak and slips beneath the sheets. Nagini rejoins them on the bed, draping her massive body across both their legs. If only she were a cat, Harry thinks she’d be purring.

He turns on his side to face Voldemort, perhaps against his better judgement. He’s already looking, his eyes somehow managing both intensity and softness. Harry has never seen them so gentle. 

“Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight,” he responds quietly. Already the crawling beneath his skin has settled down to a comfortable hum, an energy. This is enough.

He closes his eyes without turning away, and if he imagines Voldemort’s eyes on him until he falls asleep, what harm can it do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://riddleandpottersittinginatree.tumblr.com)


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